


daughter of the storm

by rievu



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/F, Masturbation, Non-Linear Narrative, Outdoor Sex, Romance, Thalmor, Vaginal Fingering, War, explicit sections will be marked if you don't want to read it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2020-05-13 02:37:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 46,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rievu/pseuds/rievu
Summary: Aela gazes at her, and when Linnea looks up at her, she finds Aela studying her features carefully. “You hunt well though,” the huntress finally says. “And from what I’ve heard of you and your feats, you are a true daughter of Skyrim.”“I’m afraid Ulfric Stormcloak would die before he takes a high elf into his cause,” Linnea snorts.Aela shakes her head and clarifies, “Not in the way that man defines it. In the way you help Skyrim and its people. You don’t bend to the Thalmor nor the dragons, and instead, you hunt down the ones that hurt innocents. You may not be Nord, but that is what a true daughter of Skyrim is, like it or not.”// a series of scenes regarding the dragonborn and her wolfish lover





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> explicit content is at the very end, beginning with "it starts slowly" and ending with "my turn now" at the end of the chapter. you can stop reading when you see "it starts slowly" if you don't want to read it.

Linnea’s mother is the fiercest Nord that Linnea knows.

Ingrid Thorn-bow can bring down an entire cave bear by herself, track down a wounded animal for days across the frozen mountains, and build an entire shed within a week’s worth of time. But most importantly, Linnea’s mother can and will take on an entire school and an entire city's worth of people in order to defend her daughter.

Because Linnea is not a Nord like her mother. Her skin is the color of a septim in the sun, and her ears are sharply pointed like knives. Her bones are like bird’s bones rather than a Nord’s: slender and lithe. Magic sparks in her fingers, and her hands fit the slender grip of a staff far better than the weight of a greatsword or war axe.

Some people in Solitude call Ingrid a fool, a traitor, an idiot who brought home an elven orphan after the war instead of bringing back home victory. Some of the more vocal residents of Solitude blame Ingrid for the White-Gold Concordat when they get drunk. Linnea cries when the children at her school call her and her mother Thalmor agents. “That’s not true,” she tries to tell them. But when Linnea asks her mother, Ingrid only smoothes her hand across Linnea’s cheek and tells her that she would make the same choice over and over again.

Linnea then promises herself that she will be Nord for her mother and for the rest of Whiterun. She isn’t Thalmor, she _isn’t._ And she’ll prove that to them. The rest of Linnea’s life is largely spent doing just that: pursuing the unattainable ideals of the Nords.

She trains by her mother’s side, eschewing the staffs and the entrance letter from the College of Winterhold. Her bow becomes her weapon instead, and she hones the skill until it is razor-sharp and deadly. Soon, she can track and hunt as well as her mother. She brings her prey back to Solitude and tries to sell the meat, but even then, she is derided as a paltry mer. Some merchants even spit at her and call her Thalmor. Solitude is Nord through and through no matter what High King Torygg and the Thalmor embassy say, and the Nords have no love of the Thalmor.

But Linnea knows that no matter what, her mother loves her.  Her mother would protect her, and she owes her mother her life.

And that is enough for her.

 

* * *

 

Linnea starts traveling in pursuit of greater hunts. The nobility will pay well for sabre cat pelts and others of the like. Some prefer to hang their sharp-toothed skulls or use them as displays of their wealth. Linnea knows one noble in particular who enjoys using the skulls as gruesome vases for her mountain flowers. Well, Linnea doesn’t mind. Whatever brings in septims, she’ll hunt down.

She ventures farther and farther out from Solitude until she finds herself on the outskirts of Whiterun. It’s a beautiful place with good deer for hunting, and she starts methodically working her way through the fields. There’s a full moon hanging low on one side of the sky, and the night settles darkly over the fields and distant woods. Linnea pays the night no heed as she resumes tracking down her prey. This is one of the greater talents that she has. Her bow is ready in her hands, and her quiver is full of arrows.

However, Linnea stills when she hears the distant sound of howling. The sound is too bright and the timbre is too large — shearing across the expanse of air in the open night — for it to be a normal wolf. She glances down at the tracks that she’s following and then notices pawprints that are far too large for any wolf.

Linnea starts to run.

Halfway back to Whiterun, two wolves burst out and start loping their way towards Linnea with their jaws hanging open and their long tongues lolling out with evident hunger. Their bodies are twisted, caught halfway between man and wolf. Linnea speeds her steps, and when she passes by a rocky outcropping, she ducks behind it. Her hands reach for her bow and arrow, and the latent magic lying under the edges of her skin crackle along the shaft of the arrow. Lightning trickles down the edge of it, and Linnea takes aim.

It flies straight and true, and along its path, a miniature storm takes flight. The arrow lands on the first werewolf — a giant, hulking thing of silver fur and golden eyes — and sparks course through its body. It falls, twitching and writhing from the electricity. The second werewolf, golden in fur and eyes, pauses to nudge the prone body of the werewolf and lets out a whining keen. Static electricity discharges against the second wolf. Linnea doesn’t stay long to hear its yelp.

The enchanted wood of her bow grows hot under Linnea’s touch, but her grip on it remains true and strong. Her mother had arrows sharp as thorns, and the wounds she dealt stung worse than nettles and brambles and anything else in the wilds of Skyrim. That is why they called her Ingrid Thorn-bow. Linnea had a storm trapped in her blood, and although she never went to Winterhold for training. stray sparks of electricity would crackle off her hands. Lightning was easiest for her to enchant into the essence of her bow, and so, they called her Linnea Storm-bow. She does not treat the epithet lightly.

Her breath grows heavy and ragged in her throat, and Linnea spares a glance back. Now, there’s a veritable pack of werewolves surging forward and pounding across the plains. Linnea swears under her breath and runs towards Whiterun. A few more arrows fly and summon lightning in their wake. That affords Linnea enough time to run until the city looms in the distance.

When the city is finally in sight, the wolves stop running and turn back. Linnea crumples to the ground once she’s sure that the werewolves are gone. Her legs feel like jelly, and her lungs burn with exertion. But she’s alive. She’s alive and that’s what matters.

She buys a room at an inn and gratefully sleeps for the rest of the night. Linnea wakes up in the morning with an ache in her legs, but she totters out of bed and makes her way to a table. Breakfast is a simple thing with toasted bread, but midway through eating, Linnea notices a woman lingering by her table. Her eyes are pale, and that’s only accentuated by the war paint streaking across her face. Her hair is bright and vivid in the morning light — red and ginger and brown and all shades caught in between — and her gaze is solely on Linnea. “You’re new here,” she muses.

“That I am,” Linnea cautiously says. “I’m Linnea.”

“I’m Aela,” the woman says. She shifts and adjust the bow slung across her back before she smiles at Linnea. “You look like a huntress and a good one at that.”

Linnea glances down at her own bow and quiver leaning against the table legs and her Nordic armor made with hide and leather tanned by her mother. She rubs the calluses on her hands — one borne of too many years with the twang of the bowstring — and she shrugs. “I suppose so,” she tells Aela.

Aela gives her a startlingly wolfish grin and says, “I like that.”

 

* * *

 

Once, Aela asks Linnea if she knows how to hunt. It’s a rhetorical question that Aela already knows the answer to, but Linnea flashes back a grin that shows the points of her teeth and says _yes_ in a voice that is barely above a deadly whisper. It is the same kind of breath she uses to speak with in the woods when she tracks down prey with a partner. Aela understands; she speaks the same language of air and wood and blood that is the language of the hunt.  
  
If there is one thing that is true about Linnea Storm-bow, it is her mother’s lessons with the bow and arrow. The gold color of her skin and the points of her and her wretchedly tall height that sets her apart from the other Nords does not matter when it comes to the art of the hunt. She’s spent enough time with her mother, tracking down animals by the footprints they left behind in mud and snow and upturned soil, to know this one truth about her. It does not matter if Linnea is an elf; she is a huntress.  
  
She’s still new enough to Whiterun that she doesn’t quite know about Aela’s status as a Companion, but when Aela offers the chance to hunt with her, Linnea readily accepts. They meet just when the sun sets and twilight begins to stretch it’s long limbs over Skyrim. Linnea already has her bow ready and her quiver full of arrows. Her hunting knife is strapped to her belt, and she wears light shoes that will make nearly no sound against the soft, spongy ground of the plains near Whiterun.  
  
They begin by tracking. Aela is small enough to hide among the tall grasses when she crouches down and begins to sneak, but Linnea’s height prevents her from doing that. Linnea compensates by taking longer strides that Aela that still remain silent in the dead of night. Fireflies flicker on and off in the darkness, and the half moons shine above them, but Linnea doesn’t need the extra light to see. One of the few gifts her heritage gives is her is this. Linnea scans their surroundings and checks the ground before she triumphantly glances up at Aela. She flicks her finger over in the direction that their prey traveled.  
  
Aela nods before she wets her finger with the flat of her tongue and double-checks the direction of the wind. Linnea can’t help but feel riveted by the way Aela licks over her finger. When Aela catches Linnea looking, she coyly smiles and sucks on her finger once more for good measure. Linnea flushes pink and turns to track down their prey.  
  
Judging from the tracks, it’s a stray moose that wandered too far from safer territories. Here in the plains, a single shot from Linnea’s now would be enough to down it. There wasn’t much to hide with, but in return, that meant that both Linnea and Aela were easier to spot compared to the woods. At least it wasn’t the tundra. Linnea shudders as she thinks of the barren lands of Winterhold. Nothing there was worth hunting except for the ice wolves that wandered the tundra, and even then, they traveled in dangerous packs. She supposes that the ice bears were another option, but those were more dangerous than they were worth. Here, in warmer places, deer and moose were better worth her time.  
  
They creep through the plains, and then, they see the moose ambling through the grasses. Aela smiles with teeth that seem far too sharp for her mouth before she draws her bow and looses the first arrow. It lands true to aim, and the moose stumbles. It still has enough life to trumpet loudly under the moonlight and sprint.  
  
Linnea’s nerves spark alight with adrenaline as she starts sprinting after it. Aela joins in the chase with a whoop of laughter: uncaring of sound now that their prey was nearly caught. Linnea manages to gain a lead on Aela, and she’s well enough within range to draw back an arrow and let go of her taut bowstring. The arrow soars, and the twang of the bowstring responds beautifully. Linnea lowers her bow and watches as the moose falls over, dead.  
  
“Good catch,” Aela calls out. She saunters up to Linnea and claps her on her shoulders. “Shall we?”  
  
Linnea follows her to the moose, and together, they haul it closer to a creek. Linnea starts building a rack to let the body drain and to hang the hide on out of thick branches while Aela begins to skin the moose with practiced hands. They work in silence, but as they work, Linnea begins to hum an old Nordic song that her mother taught her. Aela starts to hum along too, and they work together in tune. They quarter the moose together, set the offal aside in reddened piles, and cleave through the fat and muscle and sinew.  
  
“You’re better at tracking than you let on,” Aela comments. She idly twirls the hunting knife before saying, “Far better than I expected, if I’ll be honest.”  
  
Linnea laughs as she starts gathering up her tools. “I’ve been hunting with my mother since I was a child,” she tells Aela. She goes over to the river and starts to wash her tools and her armor with light splashes of water. “I grew up with a bow in my hands and the wilds of Skyrim to explore.”  
  
Aela crouches nearby to build up their small campfire and comments, “Forgive me for asking, but are you not from the Summerset Isles?”  
  
Linnea wipes a smear of blood off the flat of her blade and answers, “I suppose so. Nowhere else for me to come from, really, but I don’t know. I’m a war orphan, actually, found in Cyrodiil. My mother was discharged from the army on account of war injuries and was heading home to Skyrim when she found me.” Linnea barks out a short laugh, before she says, “Honestly, I’m still surprised that my mother didn’t just put me down right away. After all, I was an elf, and elves were the ones to burn the Imperial City. Skyrim has little love for high elves either. I’m usually considered Thalmor automatically.”  
  
Aela gazes at her, and when Linnea looks up at her, she finds Aela studying her features carefully. “You hunt well though,” the huntress finally says. “And from what I’ve heard of you and your feats, you are a true daughter of Skyrim.”  
  
“I’m afraid Ulfric Stormcloak would die before he takes a high elf into his cause,” Linnea snorts.  
  
Aela shakes her head and clarifies, “Not in the way that man defines it. In the way you help Skyrim and its people. You don’t bend to the Thalmor nor the dragons, and instead, you hunt down the ones that hurt innocents. You may not be Nord, but that is what a true daughter of Skyrim is, like it or not.”  
  
Linnea feels a knot forming in her throat, but she manages to say, “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”  
  
Aela gives her another sharp-toothed smile, but there’s something tender in her eyes. Linnea finds that she wants to see that look more often in Aela’s lovely eyes.

 

* * *

 

“I’m so tired of war,” the Altmer girl chokes out.

It’s a sentiment that the Nord woman can relate with. This war with the elves is weary and sharp and bloody in every way possible. Her ravaged limbs are proof of that at the very least, and the blood of her fallen brothers and sisters also add more weight to that statement. If anything, she should be looking at this elf with revulsion in her eyes, but instead, she looks at her with such pity in her eyes. There are burns streaking up and down the child’s arms, and the Nord’s strongest healing potion would barely make a dent in all the wounds the elven child has. “You’re just a child, aren’t you?” she says. “How old are you?”

“I don’t know,” the Altmer says honestly.

The Nord woman shakes her head and slings her bow back behind her back. “Not old enough,” she says. “Come, we’ll get you somewhere safe where the Legion can’t find you. What is your name?”

“I don’t know,” the Altmer repeats. Something flickers in her eyes, and she reaches into her singed pocket to pull out a piece of parchment. The original piece must have been burnt as well, but despite the charred edges, the single word on it reads “North.” The Altmer girl shows the Nord the paper and says, “I need to go north.”

“Incidentally, I’m heading North myself,” the Nord says. She shakes her head and mutters, “Shor’s beard, what am I doing with an _elf?_ They’re killing us all, but she’s just a child. They’re sending their own children into war too. Heartless heathens, all of them.” The Nord looks back up at the elven girl, and her expression softens. She reaches into her pack for one more healing potion. Her back still twinges with pain. After all, she’s not being sent back home for nothing. They’re sending her back home because of her injury; she can’t fight the elves if she’s injured like this. She’d only be crippling the Imperial legions in her current condition, and she needs the healing potion for herself. But the elf girl still has too many blisters and raw, open skin from fire and Shor knows what else. So, she hands the potion to the girl instead of drinking it herself.

“I am Ingrid Thorn-bow,” she says to the girl. “And I am heading back home to Skyrim. That’s up north. I’ll take you with me if you need to go north. Are you sure you don’t remember your name? Do you remember anything about yourself?”  

The girl shakes her head. But then, she pauses and tilts her head. “Storms,” she murmurs quietly. “I used to play outside with the storms.”

Ingrid examines the girl’s face for any sign of deceit, but she sees nothing else other than weariness and pain. Curse her soft heart. Ingrid reaches out to press a hand to the girl’s shoulders but does not miss the way the girl flinches. “Then I will call you Linnea for now,” she says. “Linnea Storm-bow, like my name but for the storms. You can come with me to Skyrim. I’ll protect you. You’re safe now.”

Linnea looks at Ingrid, and her eyes fill with tears. “Really?” she asks.

Ingrid nods. “Really,” she repeats.

 

* * *

 

It starts slowly.  
  
First, Aela and Linnea hunt together when the moons are small. Never on full moons, never when the moons are gone from the night sky, always when the moons are half-lit or shaped into crescents. After a while, Linnea starts to time her visits back to Whiterun exactly at the right phase of the moons, and Aela makes sure that she is waiting in Whiterun at the right time.  
  
Second, Aela and Linnea begins to leave gifts for each other. Aela starts with pelts to keep Linnea warm on her travels. There is a bear pelt that is turned into a warm cloak, a fox pelt that turns into gloves when Linnea complains of the cold in Dawnstar and Winterhold, and a deer hide satchel to hold Linnea’s increased number of healing potions. Linnea brings back weapons for Aela: a curved bow honed by the ancient hands of old Nords found in a draugr tomb, a new dagger made of ebony from Solstheim, and arrows made of different metals and materials like orichalcum and glass.  
  
But the third — and most tender — thing occurs like this.  
  
Linnea arrives back to Breezehome, and instead of Lydia readying the house, Aela is there with a haunch of meat roasting over the fire and a new pelt slung over the back of a chair. “Welcome back, Dragonborn,” Aela says when Linnea comes in through the door.  
  
“You don’t have to call me that,” Linnea automatically says. She glances around her home and sees Aela’s touch around the house. She places things in different places compared to Lydia, but it still warms Linnea’s heart to see. There are fresh mountain flowers in a small vase on the table, and beside it, there’s plates set out for two. “Where’s Lydia?” Linnea asks.  
  
“She had business at the Jarl’s castle,” Aela lightly says. She turns the haunch of meat on the fire one more time for good measure and brushes some additional seasoning on it. “I offered to watch over your home while she was occupied. Do you mind?”  
  
“No, not at all,” Linnea chuckles. “In fact, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing you more often. It was a pleasant surprise. Only if you’re willing though.”  
  
Aela smiles and slides the meat off the spit and on a platter. She sets it down on the table and gestures for Linnea to sit down. “Now, tell me more about your adventures this time, Linnea,” she says with a different kind of smile that Linnea is quickly learning to love.  
  
“Only if you tell me about your new hunts,” Linnea replies. She sits down and gazes at the array of foods that Aela cooked for her. It strikes her more than it normally would if Lydia cooked her food. The fact that Aela willingly took time out of her day to cook her food, knowing that she would be arriving soon, makes Linnea’s heart warm.  
  
Aela pours them both a glass of Black-Briar mead, and they both raise their glasses before drinking. The honeyed sweetness of it spreads across her tongue and makes her entire body feel warm. Maven Black-Briar might be a tough and unscrupulous woman, but damn, her mead was good.  
  
They chat over dinner, and the mead loosens both Linnea’s tongue and her inhibitions. They laugh and talk, but Linnea finds herself noting down the way Aela’s lips move and the way Aela’s eyes glitter in the light. The warm sweetness of the mead makes her body feel warmer, and a hot thrill of arousal pricks its way down her spine. Linnea rises to put away the dishes, hoping that it’ll be enough to tamp down her sudden spike of arousal, but when she glances back, she sees Aela looking at her with new intensity in her eyes.  
  
Aela inhales shortly, and a brief flash of gold flickers over her pale irises. Linnea shivers when she sees it and turns back sharply. She places all the dishes back and pours cold water over them, but she keeps thinking about Aela’s eyes. Aela had a tendency to do that when she was at the height of the hunt, but Linnea never found out why. Now that Aela’s looking at her like that, Linnea discovers that she wants to push Aela and see how much gold she can yield out of the huntress.  
  
Aela’s already beaten her to it though, and Linnea can feel Aela snake her hands behind her to presumably help with the dishes. Linnea’s taller than Aela, but she can feel Aela’s soft breath against the slope of her own neck and shoulder. It’s intimate and it’s close, but the thing that really makes Linnea’s breath heave is the fact that Aela’s hips are flush to hers.

They finish cleaning the dishes, but Aela doesn’t move from her place. Linnea ends up wiping both their hands dry with the dish towel. Aela murmurs a soft thank you against Linnea’s skin, sending a shiver down Linnea’s back that Aela surely felt. Aela then presses a chaste kiss against Linnea’s shoulder and softly asks, “Shall I?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Linnea replies with a breathy laugh.

Aela takes this as the signal to go ahead, and she starts dotting kisses along Linnea’s exposed skin on her neck and shoulders. Her hands start to roam and explore Linnea’s body, and she even slips her hand underneath Linnea’s shirt. Linnea's breath grows rough with arousal, and when Aela tweaks Linnea’s nipple, she moans. Linnea can’t see Aela from this angle, but she can imagine the amused smirk on Aela’s face right now. Aela rolls Linnea’s nipples between her fingers and teases them to hard points. Linnea has to brace her hands against the kitchen counter as she arches under Aela’s touch.

Aela is just as efficient and brutal with her touch as she is with a hunt, and she sets a pace that has Linnea keening against her. One hand delves further past Linnea’s smallclothes while the other keeps tweaking her nipple. Linnea’s sure that she has a hickey — if not several — along the line of her shoulder with the way Aela’s going. When Aela’s finger brushes against her clit, Linnea sharply inhales at the sudden touch. Aela doesn’t stop though and slides her finger slickly up Linnea’s slit before returning to its previous place on her clit.

“Aela,” Linnea manages to pant out. “Let me, let me—”

“Hold on,” Aela returns in what Linnea thinks is meant to be a soothing voice. Linnea finds it too arousing though — husky and throaty in all the right ways — and she wonders what else she has to hold on for. She’s already gripping onto the counter. But Linnea doesn’t get to respond as Aela crooks her finger and slides it in Linnea easily. She starts stretching Linnea open with her fingers, and her other hand strays down to help the process move along faster. Aela rubs circles over Linnea's clit and manages to get three fingers crooked in Linnea. The calluses on Aela's hand feel _wonderful_ against Linnea's skin, and Linnea silently thanks Aela's bow for that. With one hand on Linnea’s clit and the other working on fingering Linnea, Aela manages to get Linnea to come faster than she has in a long time. It’s a distinct, white-hot process that leaves Linnea’s skin tingling and leaves her temporarily absent of breath.

Linnea sags against the counter, and Aela laughs. “You’re far too good at this,” Linnea grumbles. She pushes away from the counter with her hands and uses her height to bracket Aela between her arms. A small smile curls around her lips as she tells Aela, “My turn now.”


	2. Chapter 2

Delphine’s grateful for the news of the Dragonborn. 

She’s spent years proudly serving the Blades during the Great War. Her knives have tasted the blood of countless Thalmor many times over, and during her time in elven territory, she orchestrated numerous attacks on the Thalmor. Delphine also remembers seeing some of her closest friends within the Blades fall to the wiles and the schemes of the Thalmor. 

The most horrifying incident was when the Thalmor began employing child soldiers against them. Delphine remembers reading the reports with horrified eyes. Two agents were killed by an elven child with hands full of magic. The last words that one of the agents sent on were to watch out for elven children with tattoos marking the backs of their necks. It was some sort of brand that united various cohorts of child soldiers together. Delphine remembers shuddering at the mad scheme. A dangerous and evil ploy, but an effective one. Other reports describe the children being just as deadly as adult soldiers, if not more impulsive and explosive. Those children were the same ones to lead the great purge against the Blades. Delphine sometimes wonders if she would’ve survived had she not been recalled to Cyrodiil. 

Now that the Great War is behind her, Delphine gathers up all the information that she’s gathered up while she bided her time. When the first story trails along the web of connections she’s established over the past thirty years, she heads to Ustengrav to retrieve the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller. If this Dragonborn was really who the rumors said they were, then the Dragonborn would seek out the Horn. 

And, as she usually is, Delphine is entirely correct. A high elf shows up on the steps of Riverwood once more with a bow slung over her back and an uneasy expression in her eyes. Delphine stiffens when she first sees the elf. Seeing the golden skin, the slanted eyes, and the pointed ears brings back old memories, and none of them are particularly good. She tries to set aside her prejudices though. A Dragonborn is a Dragonborn, no matter their race. As long as this one isn’t part of the Thalmor, she’s fine.

Everything seems to be going well too. The elf has a Nord accent to her voice, and her mannerisms are all entirely Nord. An orphan of the Great War, apparently. Delphine can work with that. Her name is Linnea Storm-bow, and her mother is the famed Ingrid Thorn-bow of the Great War. The stories tell of how she loosed enough arrows to fell an entire legion’s worth of elves before she was wounded by a poisoned dagger. It takes Delphine by surprise to hear that  _ the _ Ingrid Thorn-bow took in an elven child during the war. 

Either way, Delphine takes Linnea to Kynesgrove and observes her carefully. Just like the rumors said, light suffuses Linnea’s body as the resurrected dragon returns to death. Amidst the fire of the dying corpse, Linnea glances back at Delphine with the strength of a dragon’s soul glinting in her uneasy eyes. Delphine is, suffice to say,  _ delighted. _

"I'll be damned, you did it!” she laughs. “That was well done. You really are Dragonborn. Come on, I’ll help patch you up.” She patches Linnea’s wounds up with some potions and bandages. Frankly, she expected the worst, so she came prepared with enough healing potions and poultices. When Linnea sits down beside her, Delphine tells her, "I owe you some answers, don't I? Go ahead. Whatever you want to know. Nothing held back."

“Was that supposed to happen?” Linnea asks as Delphine hands her another healing potion.

“Well, you’re the Dragonborn, so yes,” Delphine answers. She applies a poultice to a nasty scratch wound running along Linnea’s shoulder. Linnea’s hair is long and falling out of its braids, so Delphine pushes all of her hair to the other aside to apply the poultice more evenly.

Linnea twists her fingers together as she sighs, “I’m not really used to all of this. If anything, I’m better off hunting deer rather than dragons. What’s our next move then?”

"The first thing we need to do is figure out who's behind the dragons. The Thalmor are our best lead. If they aren't involved, they'll know who is,” Delphine says with a curl of disdain. Any memory of the Thalmor makes her heart stir with the embers of an old, old hatred. Once, vengeance was the only thing she could think of. Now, it merely simmers at the back of her mind. But then, her eyes land at the nape of Linnea’s neck. There’s a small stormcloud with a lightning bolt tattooed right across the golden skin.

Delphine’s hands freeze, but Linnea doesn’t notice yet. Instead, she inquires, “Thalmor? Those are the ones who almost destroyed the Empire during the Great War, right? What makes you think they’re bringing them back? You mentioned them before too. Why are they after you?”

“You really don’t know?” Delphine manages to get out. Her words come out knife-sharp and razor-edged though.

Linnea glances back at Delphine with a crease between her brows. “It’s what the other kids used to call me when I was growing up in Solitude,” she says. “My mother told me that there’s no greater enemy to humans in Tamriel. The Empire barely survived the last war, according to her, and they’re the same people that injured her and prevented her from fighting again.” She shakes her head wryly and says, “The only thing that I’ll ever thank them for is letting my mother go back home. If not, she never would’ve found me, and I would’ve died all those years ago.”

“You’re…” Delphine trails off and studies Linnea’s features in-depth. In every way, she’s Altmer through and through. The features, the lines of her face, the angle of her eyes and the arch of her brows, they’re all undeniably elven. She's seen them repeated over and over in the people of the Summerset Isles. She's also seen them stained with blood during the war. Delphine cannot forget something like that. 

Linnea shrugs, “A war orphan. I don’t remember anything from the Great War though. The only thing I really remember is that there was a storm. As far as I can remember, there’s nothing else beyond that. My mother took me to Skyrim and raised me from there.” She raises her brows and asks, “Is that a problem?” 

Delphine forces herself to rein her composure back in and starts bandaging up Linnea’s shoulder. “No,” she exhales. She tries to focus on her work, but her eyes keep straying back to the tattoo. “I have to answer your questions, don’t I?” she finally says. “There’s nothing solid proving that the Thalmor are bringing dragons back. Yet. But my gut tells me it can't be anybody else. The Empire had captured Ulfric. The war was basically over. Then a dragon attacks, Ulfric escapes, and the war is back on. And now the dragons are attacking everywhere, indiscriminately. Skyrim is weakened, the Empire is weakened. Who else gains from that but the Thalmor?"

“Hmm, that does make sense,” Linnea muses. “The Thalmor seem pretty terrible, sticking their noses everywhere where it doesn’t belong.”

“As for why the Thalmor are after me,” Delphine exhales heavily. She ties off the bandage before she says, "Before the Great War, the Blades helped the Empire against the Thalmor. Our Grand Master saw them as the greatest threat to Tamriel. At the time, that was true. Maybe it still is. So we fought them in the shadows, all across Tamriel. We thought we were more than a match for them. We were wrong."

So very wrong. The old, bloodstained memories of the war rear their heads up in Delphine’s mind, and she can’t stop staring at the tattoo. Linnea’s busy downing another healing potion and sighing by the campfire to notice, and Delphine’s grateful for that. Half of her doesn’t believe that this Linnea is telling the truth, but the girl’s voice is too genuine, and her mannerisms are too Nord. She hasn’t broken the accent every single time that Delphine’s heard her, and the way she fights is with a Nordic style rather than the archery methods of the Summerset Isles. 

Delphine shakes her head and returns to her place by the campfire. For now, this is the Dragonborn that she has to work with. She’ll have to keep a careful eye on this Linnea Storm-bow and search for more information on her through her network.

 

* * *

 

Linnea’s heard of the Companions before. How could she not? During the winter, her mother would tell her stories of Ysgramor and the Five Hundred Companions as they avenged the Night of Tears. She idolized them when she was younger. They seemed to be paragons of the Nordic ideals, and she wanted to join their ranks.

Now that she’s face to face with a Companion herself, she sputters, “You’re a Companion, Aela?”

Aela nods and asks, “Is that a great deal?”

“A great deal?” Linnea repeats. “That’s such a big deal! You’re one of the famous Companions! One of the great Shield-Sisters that bear the legacy of Ysgramor and the Five Hundred Companions!” She pokes Aela on the chest to emphasize her point and says, “I’ve grown up with stories of the Companions every winter. Of course I’m shocked that you never bothered to tell me!”

“You have a house in Whiterun, and you’re the Thane of Whiterun,” Aela points out. “Why did you never bother to go up to Jorrvaskr? It’s right there. You’ve also been hunting with me for quite a while. Fucking me for a good time too. Did you never notice? I thought you knew this entire time.”

Linnea buries her face in her hands and groans, “I’m so embarrassed now.”

Aela laughs a deep, throaty laugh and leans over to cup Linnea’s face with her own hands. “No need to hide your face,” she says. “I think it’s quite amusing. No matter. Would you like to join? I can put in a word with Kodlak and see what he says.”

Linnea pauses and considers the prospect of joining the famed Companions. She’s not sure. Something in her expression must have let Aela know because she pulls her hands away and says carefully, “Are you sure? I do not want to pressure you into something that you do not wish to do. But, for what it is worth, I think you would make a fine Companion.”

“Really?” 

“Really.”

Aela leans back and balances on the heels of her feet to observe Linnea. “You don’t look like you believe me,” she comments. 

Linnea raises her gaze to meet Aela’s eyes and mutters, “You’d be right.” She’s not much of a fighter aside from her bow, and she’s more comfortable in the shadows. She’s absolutely terrible with two-handed weapons, and she doesn’t think that she’d survive more than a few moments in combat with a one-handed sword. Shields weigh her down too. If anything, she’d fit more among the infamous Thieves’ Guild than the Companions. 

“And why not?” Aela challenges. 

Linnea snorts, “Aela, have you seen me use any one-handed or two-handed weapon beyond a dagger or a butcher’s knife? I can barely use a shield properly in combat. There’s a reason why I stick with my bow and arrow.”

“But you’re an excellent huntress, and we need more Shield-sisters in the Companions,” Aela presses. “And look at what I wield. That is no excuse.”

Linnea decides to avoid the question by pressing Aela with more questions. “Why did you join the Companions then?” she finally asks.

Aela laughs at that question and prods her on the shoulder. “Do not try to avoid answering, but very well,” she says. "My mother was a Companion. And her mother. And all the women in my family, back to Hrotti Blackblade. I stayed with my father in the woods until I was old enough for my Trial. We hunted everything there was to hunt. Good training. Ma didn't live long enough to see me join, but I fight to honor her and all my Shield-Sisters through time."

Her expression eases when she looks at Linnea, and she leans over to caress her cheek. “Lover of mine, I will not force you into something you do not want,” she says. “But I want you to know that denying yourself based on the words of others and poor self-esteem does not become you. You have the fire and soul of a dragon. That is more than your average milk-drinker can claim.”

Linnea’s brows twitch up when Aela mentions the dragon soul, and she exhales heavily. She leans in to peck Aela on the lips and sighs, “Perhaps you’re right.”

“I know I am,” Aela smugly tells her. “Now, let us visit Jorrvaskr when we return to Whiterun.”

 

* * *

 

Ulfric Stormcloak is delighted when he hears of the Dragonborn. In his mind’s eye, he can picture a Nord, strong and true, as they stand against a winged dragon larger than an entire fortress. He can hear the words of the Thu’um, loud and earth-shaking, in this mental image of his. The sounds come easily to his mind after years worth of memories with the Greybeards. They say she’s a tall, willowy woman bearing a bow and a quiver’s worth of arrows. A skilled huntress, from the looks of her hide and leather armor. His scouts report that she’s been sighted near Windhelm with a hood over her head and a cloak made of furs flung over her shoulders. 

He has no idea what brings the Dragonborn to Windhelm, but he’s excited to find out. Having the Dragonborn on his side will do wonders to bolster his cause, and having her be one of the figureheads of the revolution would bring about an end to the war far sooner. He orders the guards to keep a careful watch out for the Dragonborn and to let him know immediately once she steps within the walls of his city. 

The days pass, and he ends up losing himself in countless plans and reports from his men all over Skyrim. Whiterun remains infuriatingly neutral, and the other holds haven’t changed their allegiances yet. He’s struggling to keep his men inspired and motivated, and although his rallying cry is just as strong, he already knows that the Thalmor are doing their best to burrow deep into  _ his _ country.  Pah. He’s heard that the Thalmor have no idea why the dragons have returned to Skyrim and that they’re merely here to oversee the enforcement of the White-Gold Concordat. He thinks that’s absolute bullshit. Whatever the Thalmor and the Third Aldmeri Dominion have in mind, it cannot be — in any way, shape, or form — good. He doesn’t trust a single high elf.

That’s why he almost draws his sword when he glimpses a high elf within the walls of his own  _ castle. _ She’s walking around with a bow and quiver strapped to her back, talking to Jorleif. Ulfric’s never had an issue with the man, but now, he just might.

“I’ve heard about the murders,” the elf says. Her voice is surprisingly stained with a Nordic accent, and immediately, Ulfric bristles. She must be hiding her Summerset accent on purpose. He can’t see her face, but she has long, dark hair, braided in a style that he recognizes among Nordic women. Again, that’s another aspect about this foreigner that rubs him the wrong way.

“These are difficult times indeed, when men stalk their brethren like beasts,” Jorleif sighs. He rubs a hand on the back of his neck before he says, “My men are stretched thin as it is. If you offer your aid, I gladly accept. The guards will be told to assist you as necessary. I'm happy to lend my hand as much as I can, as well."

“Thank you,” the elf gratefully says. She pauses for a minute and asks, “What do you do for the Jarl?” 

Ulfric’s eyes narrow, and he has half a mind to stride over and demand her to leave. He stays right around the corner though and decides to wait for Jorleif’s answer. “For Ulfric?” Jorleif asks. He chuckles and continues, “Oh, nothing official. Known him for years. He seems to value my thoughts, and I'm grateful for that. I don't really have a mind for war, and I think he likes having an untrained opinion from time to time."

The two chat idly about Windhelm and the cold before the elf bids Jorleif goodbye. Ulfric waits until she rounds the corner before he draws his sword and settles it near her neck. She freezes in place, slanted green eyes wide and open. “What is your business in Windhelf,  _ elf,” _ he grinds out.

“Ulfric Stormcloak,” she softly says. 

Ulfric presses the blade closer to the elf’s neck, just hairs away from nicking her skin. “That’s not an answer,” he snaps. 

Her eyes drift down to the sword in his hands before her gaze returns to his eyes. “I remember you,” she says. “You were the other one in the cart with me. Ralof mentioned you after I helped him back to Riverwood.”

Ulfric pauses when she mentions Ralof’s name. Come to think of it, he does remember an elven woman in the cart with him. So much of his memory from Helgen is stained with dragonfire that he doesn’t particularly remember much. He just remembers the thrilling delight and the fiery hope of escape and freedom surging through his veins among the ashes of Helgen. Ralof did send a message along to him, speaking of an unlikely woman with good potential. He never paid much attention to the message after the mystery woman never came. 

He withdraws his blade and sheathes it again. “Still not an answer, but I’ll let you keep your life, elf,” he says. 

The elf rubs her neck where the sword was and pulls back her hand to peer at it. She glances up at Ulfric again and says, “My name is Linnea. I heard of the murders in Windhelm and came to help.”

“What murders?” Ulfric asks with a frown. He’s been so busy with organizing and deploying his troops that this is a new fact. Perhaps he’s heard of it before from Jorleif or someone else. He’s simply a busy man.

Linnea’s face creases with confusion as she asks, “Haven’t you heard? There’s someone murdering innocent women in the streets of your own city.”

“The guards will take care of it,” he says dismissively. “We’ve caught and handled criminals in the proper Nord way before.”

“The guards will take care of it?” she repeats incredulously. “Excuse me for my impertinence, Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak, but have you seen the state of your own city?” 

Ulfric draws himself to his full height — which is still shorter than Linnea’s height — and retorts, “Your  _ impertinence _ was uncalled for and unasked for. The guards are perfectly capable of handling it, and now, I must ask you to leave my hold.” He doesn’t say what he really wants to say, but judging from the way Linnea’s expression shifts, he thinks she understands. Good. Let her leave. He doesn’t want her in Windhelm, poking her nose all over the place. She could be Thalmor. He can’t risk that.

She dips into a small curtsy and without another word, she takes her leave. Ulfric presses his hands to his temples and wonders how his guards managed to let a  _ high elf _ out of all people into his city. The people of Windhelm have little patience for the dark elves taking up space in the lower districts. He can’t imagine how they’d take news of a high elf wandering the streets.

He keeps hearing news about her. One guard says that the elf was sighted in the Hall of the Dead while another guard tells him that she was frequently sighted at Candlehearth Hall or the Stone Quarter. His own court wizard, Wuunferth, willingly admits to speaking with her. “We talked about journals and amulets,” Wuunferth says slowly and steadily. His aging, pale eyes blink at Ulfric as he returns to poring through his documents. “It was an enlightening discussion. Good one, that one is.”

Ulfric runs a hand through his hair and wants to groan with frustration. It can’t be  _ hard _ for his guards to remove a single elf from the premises. He can’t waste more time on Linnea though. He’s busy exchanging correspondence with Ralof and trying to locate the Dragonborn in the wilds of Skyrim.

During one frustrating night, he storms out of his war room and starts to head to his own room. It’s late at night, and already, he can see the stars and the moons twinkling in the dark skies from the windows. He lets out a frustrated noise and paces away from the room. He hears a soft creak of a door though. No one should be rotating guard any time soon. A frown twists through Ulfric’s lips and he prowls off to investigate.  He sees a tall, willowy figure in the shadows, holding a small lantern. The glow illuminates the golden sheen of her skin and the slanted points of her ears. But more importantly, her hide and leather armor are all streaked over with blood.  _ That elf, _ he bitterly swears in his mind.  _ Should’ve killed her before she had the chance to make trouble.  _ He draws his sword, and the sound makes Linnea freeze. She glances around, and her eyes widen at the sight of Ulfric. He advances on her and spits out, “What are you doing? What havoc have you caused in my hold?”

That makes her stiffen, and her features mar with anger. “What have  _ I _ done in your hold?” she snaps back. “I’ve been helping the people in your hold since you and your forces have been more occupied with people beyond the boundaries of your hold than within it!”

“How dare—”

“Yes, I dare,” Linnea says coldly. She gestures to the bloodstains on her armor and says, “Here is the blood of the Butcher that’s been terrorizing your streets. The women of Windhelm can sleep easy now, knowing that there won’t be a serial killer out for their lives now.” She jerks her thumb to the great doors of his hall and says, “I’ve ran errands for your people whether it be a simple Dunmer in the worst hovel your city has to offer or the most haughty merchant in your city’s square. That’s what I’ve been doing in the past several weeks because there will be no one else to help your people when they are in need.”

“My people were doing perfectly fine,” Ulfric retorts. He does not sheathe his sword, and instead, he steps even closer with his sword’s tip pointed directly at Linnea. 

Linnea shakes her head as she laughs bitterly, “You think that because you spend your days either shut up in your castle, planning wars, or you are out in the field, away from your people. I’ve seen the way the Dunmer of your city are treated. I’ve seen the way your farmers struggle to harvest their crops. I’ve seen the way that Shatter-Shield man skimps on the wages he gives his Argonian workers compared to his Nordic employees.” She shrugs and says, “Talos forbid that I, a mere high elf, ever try to help anyone in your city ever again. Fear not, Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak. I shall take my leave on the morrow. I only came to tell Jorleif the good news.”

“Talos?” Ulfric repeats. He lowers the tip of his sword and looks at Linnea with disbelief. “Why would you invoke his name? You’re an elf.”

“I’ve been raised a Nord,” Linnea sneers. “It was a common god in my household, before and after the White-Gold Concordat. Now, good night, Jarl Ulfric. I shall remove myself from your presence.”

Ulfric lets her leave, but he watches her with a slackened expression. A high elf that believed in Talos. What a concept. He never thought he’d ever meet a high elf like that. He sheathes his sword slowly, and the sound of the metal singing along the scabbard fills the silence instead. He returns to his room and sleeps fitfully, haunted by dreams of elves. 

When he wakes up, he wakes up to the sound of screaming. There’s still a few beads of sweat on his brow, and he can’t shake the memory of his tortured days under the Thalmor. But then, Jorleif bursts into his room and cries out, “Dragon! A dragon is attacking Windhelm, my Jarl!”

That gets Ulfric’s attention immediately, and he dives for his armor and his weapons. He cannot afford to waste time on the past and on nightmares. He straps on everything as fast as he can — his cuirass, his pauldrons, his gloves, his belt and scabbard,  _ everything _ — and hurries out the great doors. His guards are already on high alert, and the archers are sending volleys of arrows soaring towards the great dragon that circles above the city. It finally lands, claws deep in a roof, and bellows out a thu’um that encircles the city square in fire. 

A figure dashes right past him, and he whips his head to search for who it was. It’s Linnea, dressed in her hide and leather armor. There’s a cloak of furs flung around her shoulders, and there’s a hood lying slack and barely tied around her neck. Her hair isn’t braided like it normally is, and it flies behind her as she searches for a better vantage point. She nocks an arrow in her bow, and the wood of the bow crackles with enchanted lightning before she lets go of the arrow.

It flies straight and true, and normally, Ulfric would be impressed by the skill of her aim. However, he watches with wide eyes and an open mouth as Linnea opens her lips to cry out with the thunderous roar of a dragon. Her voice is magnified ten times over as she speaks in the dragon tongue, and with her words, she summons up a blizzard’s worth of breath that floods the dragon and snaps ice over its wings. It keeps the dragon anchored down, and although it struggles to take flight once more, it can’t escape the binds of Linnea’s ice.

Ulfric doesn’t waste the opportunity, and he charges forward, sword raised high, to rally his men. His guards renew their efforts and fire more arrows, and Linnea continues to shoot, over and over again. When the dragon finally manages to escape, Linnea cries out, “Clear an area by the city square and force it to land there! Those with swords can attack better from there!” 

The guards follow her bidding, and when the dragon circles around, Linnea clears her throat and bellows something out in the old tongue. It’s a simple word, not one of power, but it attracts the dragon’s attention long enough for it to land directly on the square and bare its jaws at Linnea. She doesn’t miss a beat as she rolls to the side to avoid the fire and screams the same words of power at it again. Ice encases the dragon far more with a direct blast, and Ulfric now hacks and slashes at the dragon with his own sword. 

The dragon finally falls dead, and as it falls, its corpse begins to burn with a thousand flames so bright that Ulric has to turn away. The body burns away to reveal only bone, but the fire starts to flow towards Linnea and suffuse her with light. She staggers backward from the sheer force of it, but she manages to stay on her feet and rights herself once more. Linnea glances back at the rest of the city, now silent as they watch the demise of the dragon. 

Then, one dark elf is the first to cheer. “Hail the Dragonborn!” he calls out. The cheer is taken up by the rest of the survivors, and Ulfric’s own guards take up the call as well. Ulfric remains silent though and gapes at Linnea. How could he have missed the signs? Was he so blinded by his own hatred?

Linnea dips into a small bow before she starts heading towards the gates. A few people stop her and beg her to stay for a few celebratory drinks, but Ulfric can see her shake her head. Now, he pushes through the crowd until he’s facing her. The smile slips off her face when she sees him. She inclines her head towards Ulfric and says, “Fear not, Jarl Ulfric. I was just about to leave the city as per your orders.”

Before Linnea says more, Ulfric bluntly says, “I was wrong about you. And I’m sorry. Thank you for helping us with the dragon.”

She raises an eyebrow and comments, “Such a change in attitude, Jarl Ulfric. What brought this on so suddenly?”

“A dragon,” he answers. Then, in a simple tone, devoid of any personal feeling, he tells her, “I’d like to extend an invitation for you to remain in our city as my personal guest.”

“Is this the part where you try to go back on everything that you said to me?” she says softly. It’s a thin wisp of a breath, barely audible to anyone else around them except for Ulfric himself. She shakes her head. “No, I’m afraid I’m not interested in being your ‘personal guest,’ Jarl Ulfric, nor am I interested in joining the Stormcloaks any longer. I’ve already seen the way you treat your city and how your people live. It’s time for me to go home now.”

“Home?” he repeats.

Linnea chuckles mirthlessly as she confirms, “Yes, home. Back to Whiterun. I’m afraid I have someone waiting for me back home, and I would hate to keep her waiting. I’ve spent enough time in Eastmarch and in Windhelm, helping those that I can. It’s time for me to move on.”

“What then,” Ulfric challenges. “You claimed to be raised a Nord. Will you turn your back on the Nords and join the Imperials?”

Linnea slings her bow back over her shoulder before she folds her hands and sighs, “Jarl Ulfric, I have been raised as a Nord since I was a child, and always, I have been labeled Thalmor and traitor by virtue of my appearance instead of my actions. Even you are guilty of the same. Someone once told me that I was a true daughter of Skyrim. Not in the way you and the rest of the Stormcloaks define it, but in the way that my actions speak for themselves. I am satisfied with that.”

Ulfric’s face twists, but Linnea’s already gone. She turns on her heel and leaves the city without another word. Regret and frustration twist together into a knot at the base of his throat, and he finds that he cannot move his tongue to say another word or to call out after the Dragonborn. He reflects back on his hopes of having the Dragonborn as one of the figureheads of his faction, now lost and scattered to the winds of Skyrim. Perhaps she’ll join the Imperials. Perhaps she’ll refuse to choose a side. Either way, he knows that there’s no way to salvage this now. As he watches the figure of the Dragonborn grow smaller in the distance, he shakes his head and returns to his war room within his hall. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that bit with aela is 100% based off of me not realizing that jorrvaskr was in whiterun until i was level 20 lol


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one explicit section beginning with "Linnea gasps out" and ending with "Only if you join the Companions."

“Alright, speak with an elven accent again,” Delphine commands.

Linnea sighs and tries to work her tongue around the strange accent.She’s heard it enough times from the elven embassy in Solitude though. She remembers the people from the embassy well. They sneered constantly and looked like they had sticks up their arses. Linnea tried to channel the same energy into her speech. “Hello,” she tries. “My name is Arenwe. A pleasure to meet you, Emissary Elenwen.”

Delphine sniffs at the sound of that and glances over at Malborn. He nods, and Delphine sighs, “Passable. Your vowels are a little broad, clip them a little more. You need to keep that up for the entire night. Malborn already has your belongings. Are you sure you have nothing else you want him to smuggle in?”

Linnea considers the question and muses, “Maybe a few more healing potions?”

Malborn nods and takes her bag out. Delphine steeples her hands together and says, “You know the plan? Good. Now, I only have one more tip for you before you leave for the party.” Her expression grows dark and leaden with something that Linnea can’t really discern yet. “Never, _never_ show them the back of your neck,” Delphine orders stonily.

Linnea blinks at that and absently scratches the back of her neck. “Why? Is that some sort of cultural thing with the Altmer?” she asks.

Delphine shakes her head. “No,” she answers. “It’s because you have that tattoo at the back of your neck.”

“Oh, that?” Linnea says with a touch of wonder. “I don’t remember how I ever got that. I’ve had it ever since I was a child. Why?” 

Delphine hesitates. She sets her hands back down at her sides and looks Linnea over with a razored gaze. “You’ll be more recognizable,” she finally says. “Give the Thalmor a single detail and they will use the rest to hunt the rest of the details down.”

“They’re already going to see my face though,” Linnea points out. “And there aren’t many Altmer in Skyrim.”

“But compare the number of Altmer in the entirety of Skyrim and the number of Altmer with that exact same tattoo in that exact same place,” Delphine shoots back. “It’s a part of you that makes you identifiable, that makes you _trackable._ Be careful not to give the Thalmor too much. It’s something that you’ll always end up regretting. Wear your hair down. Wear something with a high collar. I don’t care what you do, but don’t let them see that.” Linnea shrugs, but Delphine sharply says, “Promise me.” 

“If it’s that important to you, then I’ll try my best,” Linnea says. Delphine sighs heavily before she turns her back on Linnea. Her hands are now tightly clasped behind her back, so tight that her knuckles are white as snow. 

LInnea takes her leave then, and on the night of the party, she dresses in the finest clothing she’s ever worn. Delphine gave them to her just before she left. They’re in the latest style from the Summerset Isles, and the entire outfit is designed to highlight the long lines of her body. Truth be told, it’s _nice_ to wear something that finally fits her properly. No need for adjustments or lengthening of hems with this one. All she has to do is slide it on. It feels too comfortable on her, almost like she’s donning a second skin. She hates it. 

She hates looking at herself in the mirror because when she does, she feels like she’s looking at the reflection of everything that almost the entirety of Skyrim has been accusing her of being. Thalmor. She looks too Thalmor, too elven, too _right_ in the mirror, as if this was everything she was supposed to be in a different life. Linnea hates that. Hates the thing she’s become in the mirror, hates having to pretend to be one of _them_ when it’s been everything that she’s denied herself to be for so many years. 

“Hello. A pleasure to meet you,” she practices once more. “My name is Arenwe, Emissary Elenwen.” Linnea groans and turns away from the mirror. She doesn’t even know what her original name was beyond Linnea. She doesn’t even know how old she is. Elves age slower than humans. She could be older than she thinks she is. Linnea never thought she would ever care about this, but when she glances back to look at the mirror once more, all of her doubts come surging back to the forefront of her mind. 

At the party, Emissary Elenwen is as beautiful as she is terrifying. Furthermore, Linnea recognizes Elenwen from Helgen. She’s so scared that Elenwen will recognize her. But then again, she was soot-stained and covered with dirt. Hopefully she’s cleaned up enough for Elenwen to not recognize her at all. 

“Welcome,” Elenwen says with an expansive gesture. She’s smiling, but it’s not reaching her eyes. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I am Elenwen, the Thalmor Ambassador to Skyrim. And you are…?”

Linnea dips into a curtsy and opens her mouth to speak, but her nervousness makes her lose her words. “You’re Elenwen?” she manages to say. Thank _Talos_ that her tongue is still clinging onto that Summerset accent. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Linnea wants to punch herself right now.

“Have you? All good, I trust,” Elenwen replies evenly. “But you have me at a disadvantage. I’m afraid I know nothing about you. Please, tell me more about yourself.” A glint gleams in Elenwen’s eyes — the shape so similar to Linnea’s own — but Linnea recognizes it as suspicion, bold and clear. Elenwen rakes her gaze over Linnea, only to find nothing. It’s pure elven fashion, exactly like the ones the Thalmor prefer. If Delphine is to be believed, these clothes are authentic as well instead of being Nordic copies. “What brings you to this?” Elenwen asks. “To Skyrim?”

Linnea frantically casts her mind around, searching for some sort of reason, all while keeping a close-lipped smile firmly on her face. Malborn comes in to save her with some flimsy excuse about wine though. Something about Arenthia red. Whatever it is, Linnea uses the opportunity to escape. She strikes up a few conversations and mingles with the rest of the guests, trying to find an opportunity for a distraction, but another issue crops up.

An elven man approaches her now. He’s got a chiseled jaw, golden eyes, and the robes of a Justiciar, and Linnea has no idea what he wants with her. “Good evening,” he says. “My name is Ondolemar, head of the Justiciars in Skyrim. I don’t believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting such a lovely Mer as you.”

“A pleasure as well,” Linnea returns, still in that Summerset accent. The more time she spends with that accent lying still and steady on her tongue, the more comfortable it feels. She hates that. She hates it so much. Also, she’s rather irritated by this point. If Delphine was so _well-informed,_ why did she never bother to give Linnea a decent set of information about other guests at the party? All she has at this point is her weak alibi, and she’s not quite sure how to live up to it, especially when this Ondolemar is looking at her with such intensity. He’s expectant, still waiting, and Linnea realizes she hasn’t told him her fake name yet. She lifts her head up and imitates the same posture and attitude that Elenwen had. “Arenwe,” she tells him. “My name is Arenwe.”

“Ah, a pleasure, Lady Arenwe,” he purrs. “Rare to see such a beauty in these wild parts. It’s a rather degenerate place, filled with decay and rot in the worst places. What brings you here?”

“An invitation like everyone else,” Linnea returns. Ondolemar laughs at that, and she tries to imitate the same disdain in Ondolemar's voice as she says, “But you are exactly correct. What a miserable little country. I find that everything freezes or smells here whether that be the outdoors or the little hovels that they call homes or the people.”

“Indeed, indeed,” Ondolemar chuckles. He resumes his study of her face, carefully taking in all her features, and slowly says, “Forgive me for my manners, but have we met before? You look a little familiar.” 

Talos, not _this._ Was he at Helgen too? Linnea pastes on a little smile and says, “I’m afraid not. I was recently stationed here in Skyrim, so I don’t think we’ve had the opportunity to meet.”

“Oh really?” he muses. “Where from? Where do you hail from?”

“Oh, I was moved from Cyrodiil,” Linnea says. That much is true at least. Her mother found her in Cyrodiil. But she continues, “But I originally come from Skywatch.” This is part of the backstory Delphine crafted for her and hammered into her memory harder than a blacksmith with a forge full of fire salts.

His eyes don’t stray from her as he says, “Lovely city, Skywatch is. From the Iluvamir region, no?”

Oh, now that’s strange. Linnea may not remember a single bit from her past, but when she was younger, she had a phase where she obsessively tried to pore over every bit of her past that she could remember. Frankly, she remembered almost nothing from her childhood before she met her mother, but during that phase, Linnea would pore over maps and books about the Summerset Isles with intense fervor. From that, she knows that Ondolemar is wrong. “Really now?” she asks in a deceptively light tone. “Skywatch is lovely, yes, but it’s in the Calambar region, not Iluvamir.”

Ondolemar smiles widely now, showing his teeth. “Forgive me,” he says. “It seems as though my many years in Skyrim have made my memory of our homeland a bit fuzzy.” The suspicion’s still there in his eyes, lying heavy and deep amidst the gold, but now, it’s eased up a little bit. 

“Mmm, indeed,” Linnea says in turn, fighting the urge to rub the back of her neck. She promised Delphine, but it’s a nervous tic that she has. Right now, she’s never been more nervous in her entire life. Helgen is nothing compared to this. At least in Helgen, the enemies were clear: the dragon in the skies and the executioner. All she had to do was get out of there as fast as she can. Here, she has no idea what she has to say in order to make this all a success. Everything is intangible, and she feels incredibly lost here. 

She takes her leave and flags down someone with a platter of drinks. A glass of Arenthia red. Good. She needs it right now. Linnea raises the glass to her lips and pauses. Maybe alcohol isn’t the best idea considering what she has to get up to next. Gods above help her now because she certainly can’t help herself now. Linnea can feel Ondolemar’s eyes following her as she moves around the room, and soon, he joins her with another glass of Arenthia red. “So, what are your plans in Skyrim, Lady Arenwe?” he asks. 

“I could ask the same of you,” Linnea says. trying to search for the right words. “After all, aren’t we all here to extend the same agenda?”

“A shame you’re not assigned to Markarth. Seeing your lovely visage and working with you as a fellow colleague on the regular would be a delightful change from the usual work,” Ondolemar sighs. Linnea resolves to never go to Markarth ever again. But also, she notices that Ondolemar has a flair for the dramatic because when he sighs excessively loud, he gestures over to the west with a flourish of his hand. “Of course, we are all here to enforce the White-Gold Concordat and weed out the heretics, but where are you specifically stationed?”

Linnea almost panics, and then, she gives in and takes a sip of her wine to buy more time. “All of Skyrim,” she blurts out. When Ondolemar raises a brow, she says, “I’m currently tracking down a few heretics in the field who have close ties to the Stormcloaks and hold high ranks between them.” She remembers Ulfric Stormcloak and his distasteful manners, and her lips twist. “There’s one named Ralof. You know, the one we were almost done with at Helgen. A shame he wasn’t executed there. It would save us so much time, but I’ve been assigned to hunt him and the others down. My higher-ups have provided me with some leads. Wherever they go, I follow.”

“And what happens when you find this Ralof?” Ondolemar presses. 

Now, Linnea’s almost on the verge of breaking down, but she forces her voice into a tinkle of a laugh. “Why, we exterminate him, of course,” she says. “He’s a heretic and a traitor to the Empire.” 

“And by extension, our organization,” Ondolemar agrees. Thank the gods.

Linnea forces on a smile and says, “Now, if you will excuse me.” She passes her glass of wine to a nearby waiter and sweeps her hair over her shoulder as she rubs the back of her neck. Her nerves are burnt out the ends. Who cares if the Thalmor hunt her down with a small mark on her skin. She’d rather scream at them with the Voice than deal with this. Linnea deeply suspects that she’s digging her own grave with her lies at this point. She finds herself a bathroom to decompress in. 

When she comes back out, Malborn manages to convince someone else to make a distraction for her, saving her the trouble of doing it herself. She picks up her belongings and peels off her dress in favor of her armor. The feeling of the leather, worn to buttery smoothness, against her skin makes her feel _normal_ again, and her bow feels warm and familiar against her palm, thrumming with a thousand trapped lightning bolts in the enchantments. She storms through the embassy — in a metaphorical sense, of course — and she leaves bodies behind as she sneaks through the rooms on silent steps. She finds the dossiers that Delphine wants, frees a few prisoners and takes her leave. 

The fresh night air feels like a balm to her trapped lungs, and Linnea sucks in big gulps of air. She doesn’t know how she survived that party like that. When Linnea closes her eyes, she swears she can still feel the dress clinging to the curves of her body and the weight of her gold jewelry hanging heavily from her neck and her ears and her head and her hands. “I’m not Thalmor,” she whispers to herself. “I’m not, I’m not, _I’m not._ Arenwe is nothing more than a false story. You are nothing but Nord.” But no matter how many times she tries to tell herself that, she keeps thinking about the way she looks and the person she could have been. Her entire journey back home is fraught with these kinds of thoughts, and when she enters Breezehome, not even Aela can help her shake this from her thoughts.

Linnea falls asleep and dreams of fire, licking white-hot and high in the sky. She can hear the sound of metal clanging against metal in her dreams as well as the sound of high-pitched screaming. But more importantly, she can hear the low rumble of thunder and glimpse the white crackle of lightning slicing through the dark clouds in her dream. She tosses and turns, and finally, Aela wakes her in the middle of the night with concern lacing through every edge of her words. Linnea falls asleep again — this time, in Aela’s arms — and she dreams of a single song sung in a voice that she doesn’t remember hearing before.

 

* * *

 

“Why don’t you let me go with you?” Aela asks in the softest whisper.

Linnea gasps out a breathy moan, arching her back up. Aela, that _clever_ huntress, currently has her hand between Linnea’s thighs, and gods, Linnea forgot that Aela knew exactly how to use her callused fingers to wring out the best in her. “Is this really the best time?” Linnea manages to say.

Aela considers the question before she answers with a wolfish grin. “Is this a challenge to see how fast I can get you to come?” she asks. Without waiting for a response, she starts to kiss Linnea as she starts her work once more. Her finger circles around Linnea’s clit, rough and hard, and she uses her other hand to make small scissoring motions inside Linnea, rubbing against that sweet spot every time. Aela doesn’t speak anymore because she’s busy sucking dark marks against Linnea’s skin or lapping against Linnea’s nipples. She does it all with a practiced ease, and Linnea feels heat and desire pool deep and dark inside her. It’s almost embarrassing how fast Linnea comes.

Linnea lets her head fall back on the pillow, and her breath leaves in one deep exhale. “You’re incorrigible,” she gets out.

“I know,” Aela says. “I like to be very good at my job.”

“Terrible,” Linnea mutters. “You’re terrible.”

“Terribly wonderful,” Aela corrects. She absently sucks the slickness off one finger, and Linnea groans at the arousing sight. 

“You make me want to go one more time,” Linnea tells her. 

Aela quirks one eyebrow and asks, “Why don’t you try then?”

Linnea sputters, “We’ve gone _three times,_ Aela. Aren’t you tired?” 

A flicker of gold passes by in Aela’s moon-silver eyes, and it makes a shiver run down Linnea’s spine. “I have very good stamina,” she informs Linnea.

Linnea shakes her head ruefully and says, “One day, you’re going to tell me your secret.”

“Only if you join the Companions,” Aela says. Her expression sobers, and she frowns, “You said you were going to go to Jorrvaskr.”

“I got busy,” Linnea weakly offers up. Judging from Aela’s expression, it’s not good enough. “Fine, fine,” she sighs. “I’ll go in the morning with you.”

Aela’s expression eases, and she lies down beside Linnea, curling in close. “And the other question,” she continues. “Why don’t you ever let me go with you?” 

Linnea hesitates longer on this question. She twists her hands together nervously, but Aela reaches out and places one hand over her own. Aela carefully pries her fingers apart, heedless of the wetness still slicking over her fingers, and squeezes Linnea’s hand with a tender touch. “I’m afraid,” Linnea admits. “The first few days after I became Thane, I took Lydia with me on adventures. Then, we went into one tomb, and Lydia came out, barely alive. Several broken bones, punctured organs, burns from a fire trap I accidentally triggered. I managed to get enough healing potions into her to keep her alive and then dragged her to a healer. Lydia still has the scars.” 

She sucks in a deep breath that rattles through her lungs and _remembers._ The first thing that caused the entire cascade of events was that damn fire trap. Linnea was just quick enough to leap out of the way, but Lydia took the full brunt of it. Then, a few draugr burst out of their coffins at the sound of her screaming and started swinging their ancient axes and swords at Lydia while her back was turned. Linnea doesn’t think she’ll ever forget the sound of Lydia violently beginning to die. She doesn’t want the same to happen to Aela.

“I’m not that fragile,” Aela quietly says.

Linnea turns her head to look at Aela and whispers, “Neither is Lydia.”

Aela doesn’t say anything more, so Linnea shuts her eyes and exhales. She can hear the sound of the sheets and blankets rustling against Aela’s skin as she moves. Out of sheer curiosity, Linnea cracks an eye open to see Aela leaving the bed. She returns with a damp washcloth and starts wiping off a tear that Linnea didn’t realize she shed. Aela looks at her with so much gentleness in her eyes, and honestly, Linnea can’t believe that this is the same woman who took on an entire cave bear with nothing but her bare hands or the same woman that shot down an entire group of bandits. 

“I won’t push you, I never will,” Aela says as she starts wiping down the rest of Linnea’s body. She pushes aside the blankets, and Linnea rises to meet her touch. “I just… I worry sometimes when you don’t come back soon enough,” Aela admits. Linnea takes the washcloth from her and starts wiping down Aela in turn. As she does so, Aela continues, “I know you’re the Dragonborn. You have a destiny to meet. I worry though. I worry that one day, a dragon will snuff out your life, that a thief’s knife will slip through the cracks in your armor, that your potions will run out and you will die in a tomb, never to see the light of day again.” She reaches out to cup Linnea’s cheeks with her now-clean hands. “I worry that one day, you will not come to Whiterun and you will be in whatever heaven awaits you.”

Linnea leans into Aela’s touch and says, “I won’t lie, I go to dangerous places. But even if I die, I will always be there in Sovngarde, waiting for you. To hell with elven heavens and whatever they may be. I was raised a Nord, and I’ll take on whichever god it takes for me to get to Sovngarde like a Nord, and I will always wait for you there.” A wry smile curls the corner of Linnea’s lips as she says, “I’ll save a drink for you, Aela, and we can drink together when we meet again in Sovngarde.”

A shadow crosses over Aela’s face — inscrutable and tenebrous and Linnea can’t figure it out _at all_ — and Aela softly says, “I appreciate the sentiment.”

“What, do you think someone like you won’t make it to Sovngarde?” Linnea scoffs. 

Aela shakes her head and leans in to press her forehead against Linnea’s own. “Just promise me that you’ll keep yourself safe if you won’t let me go with you,” she sighs out.

Linnea tosses the washcloth aside and pulls Aela close into an embrace. “Maybe one day, we’ll go adventuring together, like the hunts we go on,” she says. They both know that Linnea’s words are empty. The fear gripping Linnea’s heart is too much for that, and Aela understands that implicitly. After all, it’s the same fear that wracks Aela sometimes. But for now, both choose to pretend that it is the truth, and that is how they fall asleep.

 

* * *

 

Brynjolf likes the look of the new girl in town. 

He first notices her because he doesn’t notice her at all. He’s in the middle of spouting off another scheme to spin gold while Sapphire uses the distraction to steal something. He gathers the crowd in front of him so that he can keep an eye on them all and warn Sapphire if need be. However, there’s a soft sound behind him — someone clearing her throat? — and he whirls around with more speed than he intends.

There’s an elf standing there dressed in hide armor, but more importantly, he looks at her shoes. They don’t look like much: moccasins made out of cured hide. That shouldn’t be enough to escape his attention though. No, that takes skill, and skill is what this elf must have. 

She cocks her head to the side and points. “There’s a woman stealing a ring out of one of the merchant’s stalls,” she says.

Madesi lets out a cry, and Sapphire freezes, hand still in the lockpicked stall. The crowd surges forward, and Sapphire ends up ducking into the shadows and slipping back down to the Ratway. Brynjolf watches it all happen, and with a smile that’s frozen onto his face, he turns around to face the elf. “Good catch there, lass,” he gets out, false cheer and false levity all wrapped up in his tone. 

She shrugs. “Hard to not see a person picking a lock,” she tells him. “Good thing I was walking in this direction instead of the other way around.”

“Good thing indeed,” Brynjolf says. No, it’s not a good thing, but perhaps he can reap something out of it. He nods towards the elf’s shoes and says, “I couldn’t even hear you walking up on me.”

The elf blinks and then follows his line of sight down to her shoes. She shifts in her place, once and then twice, before she sheepishly says, “Oh, bad habit of mine. I’m a hunter, and I always forget to change into nicer shoes for the city.”

A hunter. Makes sense. She could make a fine thief. A fine one indeed. Oh, he likes the look of this girl, and although he’s been wrong about guild recruits before, he swears that this time, _this time,_ he’s right. So, he folds his arms and tilts his head as he gives the girl a once-over again. 

“I can think of a few jobs that you could do with those silent steps of yours,” he says. “Want to earn some gold, lass?”

 

* * *

 

Thalmor Dossier: Lindiriel

Status: Presumed to be deceased (observe), Emissary level approval

Description: Female, Altmer, dark hair, lightning mark branded on the back of her neck

Background: Daughter of Anenya, the head Justiciar present during the consolidation of Valenwood into the Third Aldmeri Dominion. Took after her mother in terms of magic and appearance. Pedigree was excellent, tests of her combat aptitude were one of the highest in her cohort, and was subsequently trained as one of the child soldiers. Had one of the best kill records among that particular project followed after her other peers, Elanwe, Valrendil, and Ondolemar in that same order. She presumably perished during the assault on the Imperial City, but she notably contributed by summoning a storm that struck the city with lightning bolts upon her death with the largest one striking the White-Gold Tower directly. However, reports from Justiciar Ondolemar — yes, that same Ondolemar — indicate that Lindiriel may have survived. The first sighting of her was in Skyrim at one of Emissary Elenwen's parties, and she gave her name as “Arenwe” which is undoubtedly fake. The dead Thalmor guards and the escaped prisoners are likely her work as well. Watch out for her arrows; they're enchanted with lightning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> admittedly, the dragonborn can end up in a lot of places after they die, but it's still a little sad to think about how aela will always be in hircine's hunting grounds when she dies while linnea will probably be in a different realm.


	4. Chapter 4

“So, you’re the one Aela’s been fucking.”

Linnea almost chokes on her breath when she hears that, and Aela scowls. “No need to be so foul, Torvar,” she chides.

A Dunmer across the great dining table chimes in, “She does look like your type, Aela. It’s the long legs that did it, isn’t it?”

Aela glares at him with a flinty-eyed stare and hisses, “Not helping, Athis.”

Athis and Torvar both burst into a raucous burst of laughter, but Torvar manages to regain his breath just enough to say, “Welcome to Jorrvaskr then.”

“Never thought I’d see the day to see you dragging in a milkdrinker,” another Companion muses. He’s leaning against one of the columns within the hall, and he has heavy armor on. However, one thing that sets him apart is the silver in his eyes, just like Aela’s. Linnea squints at him as he continues, “I thought you liked the ones with fire in them. You think she can just wander in and join us?”

“She’s not a milkdrinker, Vilkas,” Aela retorts. “She’s a good huntress and has more fight in her than I’ve ever seen in you.”

“Bold words, Aela,” Vilkas returns. He gives Linnea a once-over and comments, “I still don’t see what Aela sees in you.”

Linnea bristles at that, but Aela is the first to surge forward and rap her knuckles against Vilkas’s pauldrons. “Watch yourself, Shield-brother,” she warns. “Not today, Vilkas. Not today.”

“I’ve never seen you before,” another man comments. He looks almost exactly like Vilkas with the same shade of hair and the same moon-silver eyes, but he looks broader than Vilkas. “I’m Farkas, Vilkas’s brother,” he says. He pauses for a moment before he jerks his thumb over to another man and says, "Skjor says I have the strength of Ysgramor, and my brother has his smarts."

“True,” Skjor replies. He eyes Linnea just as Vilkas did: with too much caution and wariness. “I’ve never seen you bring in a high elf to Jorrvaskr, Aela.”

Aela lifts her chin up and snaps back, “So what, Skjor?”

“I’m just saying,” Skjor mutters. He shakes his head and says, “Well, where do you come from, elf? Summerset Isles, I suppose?” 

“Her name is Linnea,” Aela cuts in. She nods towards Linnea and says, “Go on.”

“Solitude, actually,” Linnea answers. Skjor’s eyebrows twitch up, and Linnea continues, “I mean, I suppose you’re right about the Summerset Isles. It’s just that I don’t actually remember where I was born. I’m a orphan from the Great War in Cyrodiil, and my mother took me in on her way back home to Skyrim.”

Skjor leans forward with one ear cocked towards her and asks, “Who? I might know her. I’m a veteran of the Great War myself.”

“Ingrid Thorn-bow,” Linnea tells him. 

Skjor’s eyes grow wide, and he slaps his thigh as he laughs, “Ingrid Thorn-bow, eh? The woman that launched a thousand arrows. Damn good shot, that woman is, and if you’re anything like your mother, then by Shor’s beard, Aela, you’ve brought a good huntress to Jorrvaskr.”

The other Companions start murmuring amongst themselves, and Linnea nervously rubs the back of her neck. Her mother’s a good soldier. That she knows, but to have her reputation praised like this feels strange. She doesn’t remember her mother as a soldier. Instead, she remembers her mother cooking stew over the firepit or teaching her how to step quietly in the wilds just past the city walls. Linnea knows that her mother is skilled. She just can’t picture her being a soldier in the Great War, killing all those elven soldiers. 

An old man comes ambling along and says, “What’s this I hear about the Great War?”

Almost everyone in the room dips their heads towards the old man, and Linnea follows suit, inclining her head towards the man. However, Skjor points at Linnea and says, “That girl over there, she’s Thorn-bow’s adoptive daughter.”

The man looks at her with an appraising eye before giving her a kind smile. “Linnea Storm-bow, aren’t you? It is good to finally meet the Thane of our hold, and from what I hear, you’re the Dragonborn as well,” he says. Linnea can hear a few gasps in the background, but her attention is entirely on the old man. His words are slow and steady, and as he speaks, he steps towards her until he’s face to face with her. “My name is Kodlak Whitemane, and I am the Harbinger of the Companions,” he says. “So, you come to join the Companions. Here, let me have a look at you. Hm. Yes. Look at that. A certain strength of spirit. From what I can see and what I’ve heard, you certainly have the dragon’s fire in you.”

Linnea opens her mouth to speak, but behind her, she can hear Aela muttering, “I told you so, Vilkas.” Whatever Vilkas says, it’s too soft for her to hear properly, but she thinks he’s admitting something to Aela.

She twists her fingers behind her back to keep herself from scratching at the back of her neck too much, and instead, she says, “Yes, Aela brought me here to join. I’ve heard so many stories about the Companions from my mother growing up.”

“All of them good, I hope,” Kodlak chuckles. “Well then, why don’t we see how you are in a battle. Vilkas over there will be the one testing your mettle.”

“Me, Harbinger?” Vilkas asks behind Linnea. Kodlak nods, and Vilkas lumbers towards Linnea. He gestures over to the set of heavy doors in the back and says, “We can brawl outside. Come on.”

Aela comes forward to walk beside Linnea as she heads towards the doors. “I knew Kodlak would vouch for you,” she whispers. “And I will always support you whether it be in this or in other matters. Good luck out there, my love. Show them what you are made of, but ah, don’t breathe fire at Vilkas. As annoying he may be sometimes, he’s a good soul underneath it all.”

“I would _never,”_ Linnea says with a mock gasp. That earns her a chuckle from Aela, and she moves forward to face Vilkas. 

"The old man said to have a look at you, so let's do this. Just have a few swings at me so I can see your form,” Vilkas says. “Don't worry, I can take it.” He tosses her two linen wraps, and Linnea wraps them around her knuckles and ties them off with her teeth. They start to circle around each other, and Linnea struggles to find any weak places. She’s not good at close combat. There’s a reason why she prefers using her bow, but with every Companion watching her, her nerves start to prickle. 

Vilkas is the first to swing a punch, and Linnea dances neatly out of the way. This is something she can do. Dodging is far easier than actually finding a place to hit, and for the first few swings, Linnea darts out of reach. “This is a brawl,” Vilkas hisses at her. “Fight me.”

“In time,” Linnea returns as she ducks out of the way of a blow. A few people in the background sigh, but Linnea tries to ignore it. Instead, she uses the few swings to predict where Vilkas will punch her next, and before he can move, she swiftly side-steps around him and scores a punch right on his shoulder. It was meant for his neck, but Vilkas reacts just as quickly as she does.

Now, Linnea goes on the offensive and uses her greater speed to dart around Vilkas and trick him into thinking she’s punching in the wrong places. Perhaps it’s a little underhanded to deceive him in this way, but at least she’s not using magic or using the Voice on him. For her final punch, she hooks one leg around Vilkas’s left leg and yanks it back to knock him off balance. Right before he lurches back, she scores a solid punch along his jaw that’s sure to leave behind a bruise.

"Pretty good arm you have there,” Vilkas manages to puff out. He’s smiling though. "Not bad. Next time won't be so easy. You might just make it.”

Aela claps for Linnea, but Vilkas gives Linnea a playful shove on the shoulder. “You might be in Aela’s bed at night, but for now, you're still a whelp to us, new blood,” he says. “So you do what we tell you. Here's my sword. Go take it up to Eorlund to have it sharpened.”

Linnea flushes pink at it and takes the sword. When she goes back up to the doors of Jorrvaskr, Aela pecks Linnea’s cheek and says, “I knew you could do it, love. I’m excited to go out on more hunts and adventures together.”

“Alright, lovebirds, break it up!” Torvar hollers behind them. “Some of us actually want to get back into Jorrvaskr, okay?”

 

* * *

 

Linnea doesn’t realize that Brynjolf is inviting her into the Thieves’ Guild until she’s halfway down the Ratway. Well, she’s down in the Ratway to get one of Delphine’s friends out, so she had to go there anyways, but when she makes too many wrong turns, she finds herself in a _tavern._ Who runs a tavern in the Ratway? It sounds like the worst business endeavor that she’s ever heard of. 

It seems like she’s rather unexpected as well because every single head in the tavern across the murky water turns towards her. They’re a little far away to see properly, but Linnea can make out the familiar face of Brynjolf. Wait, _Brynjolf?_ Linnea awkwardly lifts her hand into a small wave and says, “Uh, I’ll just be going now. Thanks.”

“Wait, lass!” Brynjolf calls out.

Linnea’s already gone.

Brynjolf follows after her though, and Linnea stops just to say, “Sorry for interrupting that entire, uh, drinking party? Whatever you were up to?”

“No drinking party,” Brynjolf says. “Just a tavern.”

“Yeah, a tavern down in the Ratway of all places,” Linnea mutters.

Brynjolf stops and slowly says, “Aren’t you here for the job?”

Linnea cocks her head to the side. “What job?” she asks. “Oh, do you mean that job you offered me in the market square? To find you in the tavern? I thought you meant the tavern above ground. I appreciate the offer of employment, but I actually have enough gold that I’m satisfied with. I’ll just be on my way then.”

The look on Brynjolf’s face is priceless: disbelief and startled surprise all mixed together. Linnea shrugs. It’s the truth and nothing more than that. She’s gone into enough tombs and plundered enough draugr bodies for her to live a lifetime in comfort. Linnea would feel a tad guilty about that if the draugr hadn’t attacked her first, but the truth is the truth.

Brynjolf scratches the side of his head and says, “Then what are you doing in the Ratway?”

“Got lost,” Linnea admits. Brynjolf still looks like he doesn’t believe her, so she tacks on, “I’m looking for a friend.”

“A friend down in the Ratway,” Brynjolf says with the same disbelief threading through his voice. “Lass, are you sure you weren’t coming down for the job? It’s not that hard, you know. Just a little pickpocketing and you’re done.”

“Oh, wait, you want me to _pickpocket_ someone?” Linnea sputters.

Brynjolf shrugs, “Not that hard if you really think about it, lass, and you’ve got the silent feet for it. We’ll just have to see if your hands are quick enough.”

“Brynjolf, I’m supposed to be a Companion,” Linnea tells him. “Honor and reputation and glory and all that. Not petty stealing.”

“Oh, so you’re one of _those_ types, huh,” Brynjolf sneers. “Didn’t peg you to be one of those kinds.”

“Well, my girlfriend wanted me to join,” Linnea mumbles under her breath. She’s still not quite sure if she’s cut out to be a Companion. The part of her that looked in the mirror before the Thalmor party tells her, _no, you’ll never be more than an elf._ The more rational part of her tells her, _they literally have a Dunmer in the Companions, you’ll be fine._ But with all things considered, she still has her doubts.

Brynjolf raises a brow at that and then, a slow smile starts to curl around Brynjolf’s face. Linnea has to say that he almost looks like the cat that got the canary. “Companion, eh?” he says. “We’re not all petty thieves, Companion. Alright, that might be a white lie, but there are some of us who steal for good.”

“Isn’t that paradoxical?” Linnea says dryly.

Brynjolf spreads his hands out wide and says, “Some steal from the rich to give back to the poor. Not saying that’s the majority of us, but that could be you. What better way to root out corruption than to remove what corrupts people? Gold, that’s what, lass. Take that gold and give it back to others who need it more than the rotten folks up top. That’s what you could do. More effective than pounding your shield and screaming to the skies like the other Companions, eh?” He eyes her carefully and adds, “Not saying that’s what you and your girlfriend do, but that’s certainly a thought.”

It truly is. It’s an appealing concept to Linnea, but for now, she has Delphine’s friend to save. She nods towards him and says, “Maybe I will take you up on your offer then. Later though. I really do have a friend in the Ratway I have to find.”

“Do you even know the way?” Brynjolf asks. 

Linnea sheepishly laughs and says, “No, not really. I’m wandering around and hoping for the best. That’s actually how I found the tavern.”

“You’re in for a wild ride then,” he replies. “Good luck.”

“You’re not even going to help me?” Linnea asks.

Brynjolf winks at her and says, “When you join the Thieves’ Guild, then maybe.” With that, he turns and takes his leave. 

Linnea groans and trudges onward. She has absolutely no idea where Esbern might be in the twisting maze of the Ratway.  

 

* * *

 

Riverwood is quiet and peaceful, but the look on Ralof’s face is nothing but. He’s mostly healed by now, but his voice is stormy as he asks, “Why aren’t you coming with me back to Windhelm? Didn’t you say that you were Nord just like the rest of us? A true daughter of Skyrim would side with us.” 

Linnea exhales out a heavy sigh and says, “Listen, Ralof. I’m not going back to the Stormcloaks with you. I’m going to go back to Whiterun and finish up a few more jobs there. I’ve already been to Windhelm, and I’ve informed Ulfric Stormcloak of my decision.”

“Wait, what?” Ralof sputters. “You went to Windhelm already?”

“Yes, I had some business in Eastmarch to settle,” Linnea replies. She stretches her limbs high up to the cerulean skies and looks out on the horizon to where Windhelm lies. She folds her hands behind her back before she looks over at Ralof again. “I didn’t like what I found there.”

“What is there to not like?” Ralof snaps.

Linnea shuts her eyes tightly, thinking back to what she saw in Windhelm. All the problems, the Gray Quarter, a woman being killed in the streets, Argonian workers being paid less than their Nord colleagues. So many problems all simmering and festering in Eastmarch. She opens them again and looks at Ralof to say, “There was a serial killer on the loose that the guards couldn’t catch and didn’t care about. I went there myself and took care of the problem. There were Dunmer children living in absolute poverty, Argonians struggling to make ends meet, and even the Nords themselves were having a harder time with their work and their lives. When I asked Ulfric about it, he waved me off and said that the guards would handle it.” A brief flicker of anger flashes through her eyes and she scowls as she says, “He barely even gave me the time of day because of my race.”

“So what? Are you going to run off and join the Imperial Legion then? Leave Skyrim to struggle?” Ralof demands. “You’re the Dragonborn. You have to do something about it.”

“Do what, Ralof? Am I going to scream the White-Gold Concordat out of existence? Am I going to breathe fire down the necks of the Thalmor?” Linnea finally snaps. “I’m only one person whether I have the Voice or not, and besides, Ulfric has it as well. What makes you think I can do something that neither faction has been able to do? There are always good reasons to fight, but this war has none of them. No, Ralof. I’m going to go back home to Whiterun. I just came by to check on you and make sure you were alright.”

Ralof jerks his head to the side and spits in a patch of grass before he hisses out, “Ulfric and his big, damn mouth.” 

“Listen, I’m thankful that you helped me out of Helgen,” Linnea says. “And I’m glad that you’ve recovered enough to return to your work. But I’m not going to join you now.”

Ralof looks up at Linnea, and for once, the frustration on both their faces are mirrored in the lines of their faces, both Nord and Altmer. He crosses his arms and says slowly, “Then this is goodbye, I guess.”

Linnea nods at him and says, “Then, I wish you safe travels on your way back.” She turns her back on him and starts trudging down the road home.

 

* * *

 

Ondolemar doesn’t go immediately back to Markarth after the emissary’s party.

Good. He can’t stand that miserable excuse of a city. What kind of person manages to live their entire life sleeping on a _stone bed?_ Ondolemar swears that this is some higher-up’s revenge on him. The note that accompanied the missive read, “Don’t you favor ice in your spells? Skyrim will be perfect for you.” Ondolemar bristles at the mere memory of it. Sending him to Markarth was a stroke of evil genius, and he hates it. 

But for now, he stares at the dead bodies of the guards in the remains of Emissary Elenwen’s party and wishes he had one glass more of Arenthia red before dealing with all of this. Elenwen’s furious, pacing up and down beside the bodies, as she hisses, “I had the finest guards keep watch, and not only do they fail, they allowed the prisoners to escape. It’s good that they’re dead because otherwise, I’d make them _wish_ that they were dead.”

“It had to be one of the guests,” Ondolemar drawls. “All servants are already accounted for, and none of them had any weapons.”

“I _know_ it had to be one of the guests, you fool,” Elenwen snaps. Her fury makes her incandescent, and her magic sparks on the edges of her skin with the sheer force of anger rushing through her. Her voice is taut as she says, “It had to be that Altmer guest. I’ve never seen her before today.”

“Lady Arenwe, wasn’t it?” Ondolemar muses. “I remember her. Lovely face, lovely dress, lovely voice.”

“What did she say to you? An idiot servant of mine distracted me while I was talking to her,” Elenwen asks.

Ondolemar shrugs, “She said she was originally stationed in Cyrodiil before being assigned to Skyrim to hunt down heretics associated with the Stormcloaks. She also said she was from Skywatch, and when I tested her by mentioning the wrong region, she corrected me.”

“Why didn’t you do anything about her? You know we’re trying to keep the civil war ongoing,” Elenwen says in a sharp, biting tone. “If we stopped her right then and there, we wouldn’t have this issue on our hands.”

“It was believable enough,” Ondolemar says. “She mentioned Ralof, the one we were going to execute at Helgen. If I’m not mistaken, you were there, Emissary, to oversee the execution. What happened then? They all escaped, didn’t they?”

“Don’t even think about speaking back to me, Justiciar Ondolemar,” Elenwen mutters. She takes the hint though. 

This is not the only failure they have on their hands. She runs a hand through her formerly immaculate hair and considers the bodies. He glances down at them as well. Arrows protrude from their bodies, so that Altmer woman had to have some skill with a bow. The thing that intrigues Ondolemar the most is the strange web of burns around the entry point of the arrow. It’s clearly lightning damage based on the jagged, charred streaks stemming from the arrow’s shaft into the flesh. It reminds him of something he glimpsed on the back of Arenwe’s neck. A sight he doesn’t remember seeing since he was nothing but a child in the middle of the Great War.

Ondolemar rubs the back of his neck as he considers it, and underneath his fingertips, he can feel the spot where a flake of snow was tattooed all those years ago. He glances up at Elenwen and says, “I think I know who this womer might have been.”

 

* * *

 

One thing that Linnea will admit is the fact that Aela’s bed in Jorrvaskr is ridiculously comfortable. Aela’s layered fur pelts and thick blankets over the bed until it’s soft and relaxing and perfect. Linnea’s managed to hollow out a space for herself among the blankets, and she leans back against the wall to flip through the dossier she grabbed from the embassy.

She gave Delphine the ones about Esbern and the woman herself, but Ulfric Stormcloak’s is one that Linnea impulsively kept for herself. She has no idea why. Linnea’s sure that she’s already established her opinion on the man and even confirmed it after her time in Eastmarch. The man may have a good heart, but if he cannot spare the time nor patience to care for his own people beyond his rebellion, then Linnea has little pity for the man. Her curiosity is still there though, so she flips through the dossier with interest. 

The more she reads, the more horror she feels. She knew he was a veteran of the war, but to be tortured and broken by the Thalmor? She would never wish for anyone to experience something like that, and Linnea quietly shudders as she remembers the face of Emissary Elenwen. Cold and calculating, all under a thin veneer of etiquette and manners. She doesn’t know if she could ever take more than a single day being tortured by someone like that. 

The one thing that shakes Linea the most is the section about operational notes. She only figured that the Thalmor were here to maintain the White-Gold Concordat but to keep the civil war going. Linnea sinks down against the wall and shuts the dossier with horror. She thinks back to what she yelled at Ralof in that quiet town by the river, and she buries her face in her hands. 

She told him that she cared for neither side and that the war didn’t have a single good reason. Both facts remain true, but now, she realizes that if she remains neutral, then she’s picking the side of the Thalmor. Linnea shudders at the thought. She burned her fine clothes from the party at the embassy because she couldn’t look at them without being reminded of what she looked like in the dress. Now, she knows she’s been inadvertently helping the Thalmor all along.

The door creaks open, and Linnea startles forward. It’s only Aela though, and she bears a few sweetrolls in hand. “I brought you a treat,” she says. “Are you alright? You look pale.”

Linnea tosses the dossier aside and sweeps aside the furs to make room for Aela. Aela hands her a sweetroll in return, and Linnea starts to nibble on it as she debates with herself. Should she tell Aela? She’s told Aela about being the Dragonborn and about the things that she’s seen in her travels, but she hasn’t told Aela a single thing about the Thalmor embassy party or the dossiers. Linnea’s still not sure if she wants to tell Aela in case she makes her lover worried. Talos knows Aela worries enough about her. 

Aela curls in close beside her and quietly says, “You do not have to tell me if you do not want to. Dragonborn business, I assume?”

Linnea looks up at Aela and asks, “What’s your opinion on the war?”

“You’ve asked me this before,” Aela replies suspiciously. “You know my stance on it by now. I just think that there might be a bunch of snowberries out there earning glory while we stay out of it, but I follow Kodlak’s lead on it as always. And you? I thought you were neutral?”

Linnea hesitates, and that’s all Aela needs to know the answer. “That’s changed, hasn’t it?” she asks, leaning in closer to Linnea. “What happened to change your mind?”

Linnea chews the last bit of her sweetroll thoughtfully before she finally says, “Ulfric Stormcloak.”

 

* * *

 

The agents of the Third Aldmeri Dominion say that Valenwood was cleansed by her mother, but when Lindiriel asks her mother about it, her mother’s expression grows dark. The only thing that she says about her time in Valenwood as a Thalmor agent was that she had to become a storm to survive.

Lindiriel doesn’t understand what her mother means nor what her mother exactly did in Valenwood. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing in this new class either, but they call her Thalmor and tell her that she will make her mother proud. She likes the thought of that. She wants to make her mother proud. When they ask her if she would like to make her nation proud, Lindiriel eagerly nods.

So, she decides that if she is to make her mother and her nation proud, she will carry on her mother’s legacy. She takes up handfuls of sparks in her hands when she attends her magic classes with the rest of her cohort. When they teach her how to use bows and swords, she asks if it’s possible to put the strength of a storm in them like her mother did. Her teachers tell her that she needs to develop her skill for it before she can enchant her weapons, so Lindiriel bides her time. As she grows and learns, she learns how to make each strike, each spell, and each movement perfectly in tune with the patterns of a tempest. She’s an easy person to train and send out on missions too. After all, most people are willing to trust children far more than they will ever trust adults.

One of her commanders smiles with pride at her accomplishments — the heads of two Blades singed with lightning, men that Lindiriel tricked into helping her — and calls her _stormbinder_ with an easy, teasing smile. She takes on the epithet with a touch of pride, and likewise, the Thalmor call her Stormbinder. It is an easy title to bear. All she has to do is follow the direction of the Thalmor and ride the wind in that direction. Lightning is a simple matter; it only seems sporadic on the surface level, but it cleaves right down to where there is the most charge, the most difference. The tattoo they give her on the nape of her neck — a mark of graduation, according to them — hurts _so much_ , but she bites her tongue when they show her the symbol that they’re putting on her. A bolt of lightning, both to represent her house and her division within the Aldmeri Dominion. _Stormbinder,_ they whisper to her. _You will make us proud._

And this is why Lindiriel finds herself on the streets of the Imperial City with lightning dancing on the edges of her fingertips and in the middle of combat.

There are legions of Imperial soldiers falling along the walls of the city, near the rear, but Lindiriel grits her teeth as she sprints through the shadows of the city on near-silent feet. There are more forces to the north, attempting to smash their way out towards Skyrim. The missive in her pocket tells her that she is not allowed to let the emperor slip out of their hands that easily. The clouds above her head grow dark with the tension of her magic on her skin. Lightning, drawn to the point of conflict, arcs from her aura to the heavens above and triggers the makings of a storm.

At the end of the night, the Imperial City falls. The palace burns with a strike of lightning from one of the storms that Lindiriel summoned over the city, and her fellow agents and soldiers surge through the halls with hands blazing with fire and fury. They finish the job that the storm started and stand among the ashes. The White-Gold Tower is stripped of nearly everything it has to offer, but beyond all of these material things, there is more yet to fall.

She ducks behind cover to avoid a volley of arrows from the emperor’s main army and then circles along the edges of the shadows to meet the rest of her division. She’s still small enough to easily hide behind cover. She hasn’t reached her full adult height yet which works to her advantage. Lindiriel manages to reach her cohort safely. Elanwe claps her on the back and quickly presses a spare dagger in her hand. Lindiriel turns to survey her comrades at arms. All of them were in the same children’s cohort at training, and although they all have different skill sets that make them valuable to the Thalmor, they are united in this last single effort. 

They are also united as they fall against the Imperial forces. 

Elanwe gets an Imperial’s blade stabbed right between the plates of her armor, Hyamir falls with an iron arrow sprouting from his throat, and Valrendil dies as he tackles one soldier ready to end Lindiriel’s life. Lindiriel stumbles back from the sudden flash of movement with her eyes wide, but Valrendil manages to flash her one final smile before he immolates both himself and the soldier. The screams echo and lodge themselves in Lindiriel’s ears, and her hands shoot out erratic sparks. Above her head, the clouds circle and darken, and Lindiriel screams out loud. 

The sound of her voice pierces through every other, silencing all the other war cries and sounds of battle for a brief second. It’s so loud that it startles Lindiriel herself, and it makes the ground feel as if it were about to shake. And then, the clouds thicken and send down one final lightning strike. It impacts the ground and arcs lightning across the legion. Ash and blood and dust blind Lindiriel, and she sinks to the ground from sheer weariness. When she’s near the ground, surrounded by the dead bodies of her friends and enemies, Lindiriel wants nothing more but to join their ranks as well. The ranks of the dead have no discrimination for race; they take mer and man alike. But something keeps Lindiriel going. She can barely see amidst the battle, but she drags her aching body towards the north wall. 

She must follow orders, she must follow the same direction that the Thalmor point her in, and above all else, she must uphold her mother’s legacy. She is too young to die, barely in her adolescence, a childhood spent following the storms and bending the clouds, too young, _too young._

But the Stormbinder collapses just outside the walls of the Imperial City. The last thing she sees is the seething storm in the skies.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one explicit section starting at the very beginning and ending with "Linnea’s more than happy to let her try."

“We’re _outside,”_ Linnea hisses. “Aela, we can’t.”

“And why not?” Aela challenges. She moves closer to Linnea and straddles her with a hungry look in her eye. “Would you rather be in Jorrvaskr then?”

“Gods,” Linnea manages to laugh. “Is this payback for not sleeping with you in Jorrvaskr or is this you just wanting to fuck me?” 

Aela considers the question before she answers with a wolfish grin, “Why can’t it be both?” Without waiting for a response, she starts to kiss Linnea. She nips along Linnea’s bottom lip, and her hands start to roam on Linnea’s body. She starts to unbuckle Linnea’s cuirass and pulls it off with practiced ease.

Linnea pulls away from the kiss, and her breath leaves her in short, ragged gasps. She wants this just as much as Aela does, but she repeats, “Aela, we’re _outside._ Anyone could walk in on our campsite.”

“Do you care?” Aela asks. “We can take this back to my room, but you seemed to care much more about others hearing you in Jorrvaskr.” Her fingers lingers on the last clasps of Linnea’s armor, and Linnea considers the question. She rakes Aela up and down with a considering look, and judging from the growing smile on Aela’s face, the huntress already knows the answer. 

Linnea doesn’t bother saying the words and instead, gets to work on undressing Aela. Aela lets out a pleased, little noise at the back of her throat as Linnea starts nipping kisses down Aela’s throat. Soon, both of them are undressed. Linnea runs her hand down Aela’s back, tracing down her spine, and Aela shivers under her touch. Despite the bite of the outdoor air, Aela’s so _warm_. Constantly. So, Linnea’s confident that Aela shivers because of her touch and her touch alone. 

Aela delves through Linnea’s curls and brushes a finger against her clit. “So wet already,” Aela says. She slowly starts to rub a circle around it, and with her other hand, she teases Linnea’s nipple until it’s hard. “As I was saying, why not my bed?” she purrs. “All you would have to do is stay quiet, hand over your mouth and eyes shut while I make you come with nothing but my fingers alone.” She leans in closer and whispers, “I love hearing you, but having the Dragonborn silent and longing for me in my own bed is something I would dream about for nights.” 

“We have Breezehome,” Linnea gasps out. “I don’t want every single Companion to know what we do at night.” She bites down a moan that threatens to spill past her lips and instead, she focuses on kissing Aela’s exposed skin. Arousal pools heavily between her thighs, and she counts it as a victory when she drags a desperate moan out of Aela instead of more words. She cups Aela’s breast and thumbs her nipple over it.

“They already know, Linnea. You heard them on your first day there. And Breezehome is nice, but imagine spending a night in _my_ room, surrounded by the scent of me,” Aela murmurs. Her voice is even huskier with arousal and desire now. Aela pulls away, and Linnea isn’t ashamed to admit that she _whimpers_ when Aela moves away. Aela lays out both their cloaks and then pushes Linnea down on the ground. She straddles Linnea’s hips and grinds against Linnea’s clit as she continues breathily, “Imagine going on hunts with me and coming back to Jorrvaskr, drunk off of victory, and imagine me fucking you open with my fingers in my own bed.”

Heat coils in Linnea’s belly, but she doesn’t let that distract her as she grabs Aela’s arms and flips her over. She presses down on Aela’s body and starts moving down her body. She lays down open-mouthed kisses her body, but just before she reaches Aela’s clit, she says, “Location never mattered to you before. Why now?”

“Because—“ Aela starts to say, but Linnea swirls her tongue around Aela’s clit. One hand grips Aela’s ass while the other hand dips a finger in the liquid warmth pooling around Aela’s sex. Aela arches up towards Linnea’s touch, wordless for once, and makes a soft keening noise as Linnea works her over. Linnea works in rough motions that circle around and around and presses all of Aela’s sweet spots, just the way the huntress likes it. She likes it rougher than Linnea does, but Linnea’s happy to do what Aela wants. Aela comes on a white-hot, whimpering moan and clamps her thighs around Linnea.

She lies still for only a moment, and Linnea thinks that she’s just basking in the afterglow. Aela reaches out to grab Linnea’s wrist and tug her closer. “My turn to try to convince you again,” she purrs. 

Linnea’s more than happy to let her try.

 

* * *

 

By the time Linnea decides to choose a side, she finds that she’s already at the end of it all. 

She loses all thought of Stormcloaks and Imperials, and instead, she stares up at the mural inscribed deep into the stone and swallows down all her words. “The wall of prophecy,” Esbern reverently says. “Depicting the return of Alduin and the prophecy of the Last Dragonborn.” 

Delphine swivels her head towards Linnea and says, “That’s you.”

Linnea reaches out to trail the tips of her fingertips against the cold stone, but underneath her touch, the stone flares up to blistering warmth. She can hear the distant call of the Thu’um hollowed out in the shell of her ears, and she shuts her eyes tightly. A strange kind of knot builds up in her throat, heavy and hot, and the telltale signs of lightning start crackling along her skin. The mark on the back of her neck burns fire-hot and storm-sweet.

“What are you doing?” Delphine protests, but Linnea can hear Esbern muttering something.

Linnea pays no attention to either of them, and instead, she stares at the carved depiction of Alduin and feels destiny snapping at her heels. She doesn’t know if she wants to run from it or embrace it. A distant memory resurfaces at the back of her mind. A low voice telling her, “This is what destiny has in store for you, Stormbinder.” Linnea shivers and pulls away from the wall.

“I have to find the right Shout, yes?” she asks. She looks over to Esbern and Delphine, and she sees the expectation and the hope glimmering in their eyes. Almost too much. The weight of it lies heavy on Linnea’s shoulders. Esbern nods, and Linnea looks back at Alduin, carved deep and heavy into the stone for time immemorial to hold. 

The world is about to end, and suddenly, Linnea feels like she’s starting to snatch at time. She feels like she’s trying to hold it all in her cupped hands, but time slips from her grasp like sand: small grains filtering through the cracks between her fingers and draining out with nothing left behind but the sensation of having once held them. She doesn’t want to face Alduin yet, doesn’t want to face the world, doesn’t want to choose a side or plunge deep into what destiny claims for her. All she wants is to return to Breezehome after a good night’s hunt and crawl under the covers with Aela by her side. She doesn’t need glory or fame or a hero’s title to weigh her down. She just wants peace. She wants quiet. She wants her lover and her home and a place to belong. Belonging is the only thing she’s ever really wanted, and yet, her place as the Dragonborn thrusts her far beyond whatever she could have dreamed up as a child in Solitude, lonely and elf-eared. Linnea shuts her eyes and inhales deeply. The scent of old stone and frozen air, of expectation and constant waiting, of a moment bent over and over in time in order for her to come and finish it all. 

By the time Linnea opens her eyes, she quietly realizes that she’s already almost at the end of it all, and there is nothing left for her to do but to walk out the inevitable. The civil war matters less now. Her own wants must be put aside. The dragon eater of time — Alduin, firstborn of Akatosh and time-snapper, adamantine end-bringer — awaits. 

 

* * *

 

“Lindi!” Ondolemar remembers crying out. “Wait for me!”  
  
They used to play tag in the field by the school, and during recess hours, all the cohorts would pour out to play together. Lindi, Ela, and Val were three mer from another cohort that he met during the first few days of classes. They accidentally placed him in the wrong cohort, and after that, he just ended up running into them over and over again in the field. Both the recess field and the metaphorical field of Tamriel with targets to capture or kill.   
  
Ondolemar wasn’t in the same cohort assigned to chase after the Emperor’s legions, so he never saw Lindi, Ela, or Val ever again. Like everyone else, he assumed they all died. After all, they brought back all their bones. Ondolemar remembers attending the memorial service for them.   
  
He leans back in his stone chair and stares up at the stone ceiling. Markarth is drafty and dank as always, and he wonders how Lindiriel — or “Arenwe” — managed to survive past the Great War and end up in Skyrim out of all places. He shakes his head and returns to his reports. There’s rumors of a Talos-worshipping heretic in the streets of Markarth, and he intends to root it out.   
  
However, a commotion echoing against the remarkably acoustic stone. Metal clangs against metal, and Ondolemar hurries out of the Thalmor’s rooms to investigate. The palace guards are hurrying out of the chambers with their swords drawn, and when Ondolemar descends the stairs, he recognizes the sound. One of the filthy Dwemer constructs must be out and about again. Calcelmo knows no bounds when it comes to his research. However, there’s a new voice ringing out in the halls after the sounds of battle die out.   
  
“By Ta— Shor’s beard, that was unexpected,” the voice laughs. It’s distinctly Nord in accent, but Ondolemar narrows his eyes when he hears the first syllable of the forbidden god’s name. He strides even faster only to see a tall figure in the distance. She’s standing up from a pile of metal pieces with a handful of arrows in hand, and she says, “Do you always have little Dwemer constructs running around? Isn’t that dangerous?”   
  
“Normally, we don’t,” one guard says with a grimace. “Calcelmo, that elf researcher, is supposed to keep them all locked up either in the ruins or deactivated in the museum.”   
  
“Well, it’s good that we got this taken care of before it hurt someone badly,” the figure sighs. “Does anyone need a spare healing potion? I still have some left.” Ondolemar’s close enough to see the points of her ears, and when she turns to gesture towards the museum, he glimpses a familiar face. Lindiriel.   
  
“I suppose I’ll have to go tell this Calcelmo that I just broke one of his constructs,” she sighs. “Although that thing did break a few of my arrows. Shame. I quite liked these ones.” She puts the few arrows she has in her hand back in her quiver before gathering up the metal pieces. “I don’t suppose you could give me directions?”   
  
Ondolemar takes this as his opportunity to move forward and say, “Lady Arenwe, what a surprise and a pleasure to see you here. I can show you to Calcelmo’s office if you’d like.”   
  
Lindiriel glances over at him, and her face freezes when she sees him. Her mouth is still curved into a smile, but he can glimpse the distinct surprise, round and wide, in her eyes. Now that Ondolemar has a second chance to look at her up close, he realizes that she’s strikingly similar to her mother in terms of appearance aside from the war paint streaking down her face. “Uh,” she manages to say. “Hello?”   
  
Ondolemar’s taken aback by the distinct Nordic burr she has in her voice. It’s a far cry from the accent he heard at the party. Even though it was a little awkward, it was still a Summerset accent, and Ondolemar remembers chalking that up to nervousness. Now, he can hear Skyrim permeating through every syllable of her words. Combined with that first shaky syllable of that upstart mortal-called-god, it makes for a very troubling circumstance involving Lindiriel at the very epicenter of it. He extends his hand out to her and bows slightly towards her as he says, “Shall we?”   
  
Lindiriel looks down at the pile of metal she has in her arms, and Ondolemar exhales softly. “Here, let me be your guide,” he says as he places a hand on her shoulder. She stiffens under his touch, but Ondolemar steers her towards the direction of the palace.   
  
The guards exchange looks, and the one who was speaking to Lindiriel before says, “That’s not the direction Calcelmo’s in. He’s right outside the ruins.”   
  
“Oh, really? Wonderful, I think I can find my way there without having to trouble you, Justiciar,” Lindiriel immediately says. The Nord accent is still there in her voice, and she tries to pull away.   
  
“Nonsense,” Ondolemar says as he tightens his grip on Lindiriel’s shoulder. He tugs her towards him and continues, “What kind of host would I be if I allowed a dear guest to wander without any help in this dank hole of a city?”   
  
The guards bristle, and the one that was speaking before steps forward to say, “Miss, do you need any help?”   
  
Lindiriel looks over to Ondolemar, and he purposefully makes his hand grow cold with ice. She jolts underneath the sudden flare of magic before glaring at him. “Why don’t we keep this civil?” he mouths out.   
  
Lindiriel purses her lips together but finally, she concedes and glances back to say, “Oh, that’s alright. Thank you for your help though.”   
  
The guard scratches the back of his head and shrugs, “Alright then. Holler if you need something, and we’ll come running.” He shoots Ondolemar one final, nasty look before he returns to his post.   
  
“So, Lady Arenwe or whatever you’re calling yourself now,” he purrs into Lindiriel’s ear. “What brings you to Markarth? I thought you were busy hunting down Stormcloaks? Clever excuse, by the way.”   
  
“I knew I shouldn’t have come here,” Lindiriel mutters. “Damn, I’d rather stay in Windhelm at this point.” She glares at him and says, “If you must know, I was hunting down Forsworn in the Reach.”   
  
“Forsworn in the Reach?” Ondolemar repeats. He keeps Lindiriel walking up the steps and turns her firmly in the direction of his office. He puts a halt to the question on the tip of his tongue to order all of his agents out of his office. They balk, especially at the sight of Lindiriel, but Ondolemar lets a touch of ice crackle over his skin for emphasis. They quickly leave the room and shut the heavy door behind them.   
  
Lindiriel looks around the room with a touch of apprehension, and Ondolemar waves towards the table with the war map. “Dump your little bits of metal trash there,” he says. “I prefer to have conversations face to face without any kind of interruption or distraction in between.”   
  
Lindiriel gives him another glare, but she glances down at the map. She studies it with far more intensity than Ondolemar expects, but finally, she carefully piles up the pieces of Dwemer metal along the sides of the map so that they don’t disturb the markers already placed atop it.   
  
Ondolemar sits down at his desk and gestures to the seat in front of him. “Please, do take a seat,” he says.   
  
Lindiriel sits down but mutters, “I don’t see Calcelmo anywhere.”   
  
“Oh, you’ll have time to talk with your researcher soon enough,” he says dismissively. “For now, I have a few questions for you.”   
  
Lindiriel doesn’t look exactly happy about it, and it’s strange to look at her, knowing what he does. Her face is at once similar and different than the face he knew in his childhood. The childish roundness is gone from her face, but the slant and shade of her eyes and the color of her hair remain the same. He remembers that she liked to wear her loose as a child, but now, she has the front part of her hair braided away from her face in the Nord fashion. She keeps the back of her neck carefully hidden though.   
  
“Let’s not waste time,” she sighs. “No, I’m not Arenwe, but I am a busy woman. Ask me your questions.”   
  
Ondolemar arches a brow as he asks, “Who exactly are you?”   
  
Lindiriel gives him a half-smile, crooked with a wry kind of humor that only she seems to know. “A hunter,” she tells him. “Bounty hunter in some cases, but in all cases, I get paid to track down something. I’m alright at it, and I like traveling so the job suits me.”   
  
“That’s not what I asked for,” Ondolemar says testily.   
  
Lindiriel blinks at him with what has to be mock confusion. She covers her mouth with her hand and mockingly gasps, “Is that not who I am? If I’m not a hunter, then I’m afraid I don’t know what my own occupation is anymore.”   
  
Ondolemar grits his teeth, but he has to admit the validity of her statement. Judging from the pelts comprising her cloak and the well-used bow strapped to her back, she’s telling the truth. But also, he knows that she was a hunter of a different sort if he’s right about who she is. There’s even that telltale lightning running down the enchanted wood of her bow. Her trademark. It still hasn’t changed from all those years ago. The smile grows wider on Lindiriel’s face as he’s left at a loss for words, but he quickly says, “Most people start with a name.”   
  
“Why, if a name is what you asked for, then you could have said so simply at the very beginning of all of this,” Lindiriel laughs. She exhales and tells him, “My name is Linnea.”   
  
Ondolemar is already tired of the games, and he slams his hands down on his desk. Ice radiates out from him in a spiked corona of glittering shards, and he warns, “Don’t test my patience by playing games with me. Answer my questions and I’ll let you leave.”   
  
The mocking grin fades from Lindiriel’s face, and a dark shadow crosses over her expression as she says, “I’m telling you the truth.”   
  
Ondolemar falters. Why isn’t Lindiriel giving in? Doesn’t she recognize him? Granted, that entire duplicity at Elenwen’s party was likely at the behest of the Blades, but now? His brow grows into a frown as he snaps, “I said enough of the games. Enough with the degenerate accent and the clothes and the entire charade, Lindiriel!”   
  
Lindiriel’s face goes blank. That’s even more alarming. She curls her hands into tight, white-knuckled fists, and she hisses, “I am answering your questions, Head Justiciar Ondolemar. What more do you want from me? Do you think yourself superior that you cannot stand to hear anything that isn’t in your own accent?” She imitates a Summerset accent as she repeats, “Degenerate accent, the entire charade. I have no idea what you’re referencing.”   
  
“Lindiriel,” Ondolemar starts, careful and watchful. Nothing registers in the depths of Lindiriel’s expression, and Ondolemar can feel his heart sink with every second. This isn’t the Lindi he knows — used to know — and now, Ondolemar stands up. He circles around the desk to face her and reaches out to tilt her chin towards her, trying to study the planes of her face with more scrutiny.   
  
He can’t see anything more than fury now, and Lindiriel slaps his hands away. “Hands off,” she snarls. She stands up from her seat and turns to scoop up the Dwemer pieces again. “If you plan on wasting my time, then I will take my leave.”   
  
“Who are you?” Ondolemar breathes out.   
  
Lindiriel lifts her chin and snaps, “My name is Linnea, and I’m nothing more than a hunter. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a Dwemer researcher to find.”   
  
She kicks the door open on her way out and leaves without another word.

 

* * *

 

Linnea doesn’t come back from Markarth. 

The moons have waxed and waned, grown from mere scythes hanging low in the dark fabric of the sky to full globes swinging wolfishness back into Aela’s skin. And yet, Linnea does not come back. Whether the moons are new or half full, Linnea always manages to trek her way back to Whiterun — back to _Aela_ —without fail. Aela paces through Jorrvaskr, and when Vilkas grumbles about it, she takes her pacing back to Breezehome. Lydia still hasn’t received any word from Linnea which is strange since Linnea is quite good about sending letters from whichever city she’s at. Even when she was in remote places like Riften or Windhelm, Linnea still sent back letters for Aela, Lydia, and her other housecarls without fail. 

Finally, the thin thread of Aela’s patience snaps, and she packs her bag up with supplies. She refills her quiver with a fresh set of arrows before shouldering her bow and striding out of the city. She even pays several septims for a carriage to take her to Markarth as swiftly as possible. Even then, the horse doesn’t move fast enough. Aela hangs her limbs off the edge of the cart, nose up in the air and eyes shut to scent the crisp air. The world seems to drip by in slow, aching, barely-moving speed. Aela debates on whether or not she should stop the cart and simply sprint through the wilds on four legs instead of two. She doesn’t have to worry about the wolf going rogue. Her wolf longs for Linnea just as much as Aela if not more. _Mate,_ her wolf quietly whines, deep inside her psyche. Aela nods in agreement. 

Mate. She’s never told Linnea that yet though. She doesn’t want to scare her off with something as committed as that title. It already took enough cajoling and convincing to get Linnea to properly commit to being a Companion. They haven’t even sprung the truth of the Circle on her yet. Aela thinks Linnea has enough of a burden — being the last Dragonborn makes her weary enough — and Aela refuses to push Linnea to do something she doesn’t want to do. But it is a truth that quietly resonates deep inside her bones, rattling around in her marrow, veining through the web of her body and the map of her heart. 

Still, Aela worries and frets in the back of the cart. She ends up deciding not to do it though. It wouldn’t do to show up in front of Markarth in the skin of a wolf. 

She storms through the gates, heedless of whatever the guards say, and makes her way to the largest inn the city has to offer. Admittedly, it’s a maze of a city with high stone walls and stairs everywhere, so she has to flag down a few people to find the right way. However, Aela’s always been doggedly stubborn, and she makes her way to the inn with a glint in her eye. People step out of her way with wary gazes, and Aela thumps her hand down on the innkeeper’s counter. “I’m looking for someone,” she says, blunt and short. “High elf woman wearing leather armor, uses a bow, dark hair, sounds like a Nord.”

“Ah, that lass?” the innkeeper replies. “She got sent off to Cidhna Mine, the poor elf. She’ll never see the light of day again.”

_“What?”_ Aela snaps out. She’s not stupid; even she knows the rumors of the infamous Cidhna Mine. It’s supposed to be the one prison in Skyrim that no one can escape from. “For what?!” she asks next, voice biting in all its fury. “Linnea’s never broken any law!” 

Well, if taking gold from ancient draugr wasn’t a crime. Aela doesn’t _think_ that Linnea’s committed any crime aside from that. 

The innkeeper shrugs. “Dunno about that,” he says. “The guards say she killed a man in broad daylight.”

Aela stills, but her heart starts to beat against her ribs, fast and hard in all the wrong ways. “No,” she quietly breathes out. “No, no, that’s not my Linnea.”

“Seemed like a nice enough girl,” the innkeeper offers up. “She wanted to help people in the city. Shame she got carted off.” He shrugs. There is no pity in his face. “Sorry. No one ever gets out of Cidhna Mine. Best to put it — and her — out of your mind.”

The wolf in her blood snaps up, bright and hot, but Aela tamps it down in favor of stalking out of the inn. She lifts her head up to the sky and inhales deeply. The scent of stone, dampness and stale ale. The night is already starting to dusk over the sky in shades of infinite grey. She walks with steps that could almost stab into the ground if the ground was the soft dirt and loam of Whiterun instead of the hard rock of Markarth. Her hands curl into tight fists, and she wonders how Linnea managed to get herself into the most secure prison in Skyrim. 

Her feet take her up and down the stone steps of the city, and Aela has no real sense of where she’s going. But then, she stops. Cocks her head. Waits. _Listens._ Deep against the city’s ancient walls, she can feel some voice resonate against the stone and shake the city’s foundations. It’s not by much, but by Ysgramor, Aela knows the sensation of her lover’s dragon Shout well enough. She starts sprinting, and the wolf in her veins starts to rear it’s head up, giving her feet veritable wings in their speed. 

She’s close enough to the epicenter of the sound to find it quickly enough. Aela offers up a silent thanks to her wolf for her enhanced senses, and she finds a door shaking against its frame. There’s a guard who’s unlocking the door and slipping in, but otherwise, there seems to be no one else who noticed the sound or the shake. Aela follows after the guard on swift and silent steps. 

When the door creaks open, it takes only seconds for Aela’s eyes to adjust to the dark. She sees stone arching high up in the old Dwemer style and hanging moss and lichens coating the slick, damp stone. But more importantly, Aela notices the clanging of metal and the slight whistle of an arrow’s flight. A series of soldiers wearing horned masks of bone and feather converge onto Linnea who barely has her leather armor on by the slips of her straps. Judging from her stance and the arrow lodged in someone’s knee, Aela knows right away that Linnea won’t survive this alone. 

Both she and her wolf surge up in sheer fury, and she looses a war cry that echoes off the stone. When the masked men turn around, Aela gives them all a vicious smile with no kindness in it and bares her teeth that steadily grow larger and sharper with each second. Her flesh and bone tear and shatter to make way for a greater beast than all of them combined, and her wolf pounds out of her with all the fury and worry contained within the span of a moon’s circle. Her heart is louder than a thunder-beat, sending adrenaline spinning through her veins, and Aela lunges at the nearest one. 

The bone mask crunches under her teeth, and she can taste the meat and blood all hot and delicious on her lolling tongue. Aela is now both woman and wolf, fur and fang and tooth and claw, and she pays no heed to whatever the masked people scream at her. They are hurting Linnea — _mate,_ her wolf howls — and that is unacceptable. Aela throws her snout back and lets out another war cry, but this one hangs between the edge of a cry and a howl. Perhaps it is both. Aela does not care. The sound of dragon’s tongue joins her, and soon, Aela can hear the wind whistling around her and a storm crackling up in the heated air.

Arrow after arrow flies, and Aela follows the path of each one. They fly straight and true, and when they land, Aela pounces and lands the final blow. Sometimes, it’s the crush of a skull between her jaws. Sometimes, it’s the tear between rib-rungs to expose the throbbing lung underneath. Sometimes, it’s claws piercing through the abdomen and ripping through the viscera, red and vicious and brutal. It’s a pattern, rise and fall, that Aela follows until she is prowling, hackles raised, in a pool of blood from creatures that no longer live. 

This is when Aela raises her red-stained muzzle and sees Linnea, bedraggled and quiet, eyes wide and ears flattened and pointed back. Aela — or is it the wolf? — lets out a soft whine and pads towards Linnea. Linnea doesn’t move, but Aela nuzzles up close to her, pressing her snout against Linnea’s half-hanging cuirass. Linnea slowly lifts her hand up and runs it down the length of Aela’s fur as she asks in the softest whisper, “Aela?”

Aela rises up on her haunches, and as she does, she can feel her body fold back into the shape of a woman. Her sinews and muscles reweave themselves back into their former shapes, and when she has her full form back, she wordlessly reaches out to fold Linnea into an embrace, heedless of the blood coating them both. Aela doesn’t kiss Linnea — she knows that there’s still blood on her tongue that isn’t hers — but she holds her tightly. “I was worried,” she manages to get out. 

Linnea pulls back and tucks a few stray strands behind Aela’s ear. Aela knows that she looks like a mess, but it is nothing compared to the dust of the silver mine and the burn of a magic flare streaking across Linnea’s golden skin. “I was trying to help someone,” Linnea starts to say. Her voice cracks along the edges, and she starts to fold herself into Aela’s arms. “But this entire city’s corrupted down to the bone. There’s nothing good left, not in the palace, not in the guards, not in the mines, not in the ruins. Let’s go home, Aela.”

Aela stills, and hesitantly, she asks, “You’re not going to ask about the wolf?” 

Linnea slowly unfurls herself from Aela’s embrace and looks up at her, as if she was searching for something in the lines and planes of Aela’s face. “You’re still Aela,” she finally says. “We can go over those questions later, but for now, please, let’s just leave Markarth.”

Aela nods and with one arm over Linnea’s shoulders, they walk out of the old Dwemer corridor, past the bodies and the broken masks and the hanging moss now spattered with rust red. When they push open the doors, there’s a group of guards with swords pointed towards them and a man that Aela doesn’t recognize. 

“Silver-blood,” Linnea says, low and soft and dangerous. 

He bristles and snaps back, “You're that _elf._ What happened in there? Where’s Madanach?” 

A smile manages to twitch its way across Linnea’s weary face, and she slowly says, “The King in Rags is dead.”

 

* * *

 

Emissary Elenwen looks at the hastily written report and frowns. Ondolemar — normally neat and orderly, almost to a fault — has sent her a report with coded Altmeris hastily scrawled across the parchment with large splots of ink blobbing in the spaces where his pen lingered too long. No matter the words, Elenwen can glimpse the urgency and alarm between the spaces of Ondolemar’s words. 

Her lips settle themselves from a frown to a thin line, lips pressed together tighter than they’ve ever been all week. She was never involved in the particular venture regarding the child soldiers, but she did admit that they were immensely useful before they were wiped out during the Great War. Elenwen still thinks that they should have continued the training, but one of the highest ranking Justiciars within the Third Dominion — Chief Justiciar Anenya, the famous Stormcaller of Valenwood, hailing from one of the finest families of the Summerset Isles and with a perfect pedigree — put an end to it immediately. Elenwen’s eyes slide down the paper, taking in the words, and she muses on the prospect. 

A surviving member of the Children of the Dominion. Lindiriel, the Stormbinder, daughter of Chief Justiciar Anenya, now living under a Nord name and heavily involved with the Blades. Linnea, the huntress of Whiterun. How _interesting._

Elenwen decisively folds the paper up once more and burns it with a flicker of flame bursting from her fingertips. If done right, they could bring Lindiriel back into the fold. Perhaps, they could even manipulate Anenya despite her early retirement. Elenwen quickly changes her mind on that though. Chief Justiciar Anenya used to be one of the most dedicated Justiciars in the Dominion, but after the alleged death of her daughter, she became erratic and unreliable. Not even re-education fixed her. No, better to keep that relic of an elf where she belonged: in the past. 

Elenwen makes a quick decision on the matter and starts penning a document to add to her new dossier on this new woman, whatever her name now may be.


	6. Chapter 6

“You’re the wolf that chased me when I first came to Whiterun, aren’t you?” 

Aela glances up from the covers of the bed. Beyond the door, she can hear the loud ruckus of the Silver-Blood Inn. Everyone in the stone city is celebrating the death of the Forsworn king. Linnea gave her a brief run-down of the situation in the city. Aela’s ears flatten back slightly, and she swears she can scent the sour ale and the sharp cheese that they’re eating despite the shut door. The sounds of the celebration is loud and raucous. Instead of trapping the sounds deep within the walls of the stone city, it only serves to amplify it and sends the sounds and music ricocheting and echoing off the granite.

Linnea twists her fingers together and starts listing off, “That wolf in the outskirts, the way we never go hunting on the full moon, the nights when you come back smelling like the forest, how sharp your teeth are.” Her slanted eyes remain firmly on Aela throughout the entire time, and her gaze does not waver a single bit.

“Yes,” Aela admits. She hesitates, hands stilling on the blankets. “Are we going to have a problem over this?”

She’s worried about this before. Aela loves her wolf, loves the feeling of her second skin slipping over her bones and marrow to reshape her into something of the night, something of the woods, something of the ever-present and yearning wilderness that sprawls out over Skyrim. But Aela also loves Linnea, and she’s never quite been able to reconcile a potential conflict between the two in all the imaginary scenarios she’s run through. 

Linnea shakes her head, and Aela feels like an entire weight has been lifted off her aching shoulders. Linnea holds up one finger though, and the feeling stops in its tracks. “And you never planned on telling me?” Linnea asks, still in that voice that Aela thinks is softly dangerous, brimming with too much possibility that makes Aela clench her fingers on the blanket.

“We were going to tell you if you joined the Circle,” she tries, hoping and praying that this will be enough.

Linnea’s eyes narrow, and she leans away from Aela. “So, you’re telling me that the entire Circle is comprised of werewolves,” she says, dry and simple. 

When she says it like that, Aela twists her lips. Her lover is a smart one, whip-quick with both reflexes and wit. It’s one of the reasons why Aela loves her so, but in this case, Aela finds that she’s scrambling after Linnea for justifications. But now, she has none. So, she says, “...Yes.”

Linnea lets out a heavy sigh before she sits down on the bed beside Aela. “Are you going to turn me into a werewolf?” she asks.

“Only if you want to,” Aela tells her, but Aela can feel her wolf bucking against her skin and blood. The concept of Linnea joining her as a wolf is not a new thought. In fact, it’s something that makes her own wolf yip with giddy glee and a thought that makes Aela feel warm and soft in the heart. But the gift of the wild, the gift of teeth and claws and burning wild, requires permission beyond all else. For Aela and the rest of the Companions, it must be a gift given willingly and received willingly. 

Linnea taps her fingers against the blanket, beating out a steady rhythm. “And if I say no?” she asks.

Aela ignores the whine of her wolf to say, “Then, it will be a no, and I will respect your decision.” She hesitates and thinks of the full moons, round and glowing with pale light that sends a thrill through her blood like nothing else. She thinks of Linnea joining her on nights like those and thinks about the earthy loam of the forest and the rushing thump-thump of their hearts beating together as one during a hunt. Those thoughts alone make Aela abandon caution to the wind and whisper softly, _gently,_ “But I would cherish nothing more than to run under the light of the moon with you because you are, above all else, my mate.”

“Mate,” Linnea quietly echoes. For a moment, she doesn’t speak, and Aela wonders if it was too much. But then, Linnea smiles: a slow thing that unfurls in its loveliness the more Aela looks at her. “I love you, Aela,” she says simply. “You know that, right?”

“I love you,” Aela replies back with a heart-warming rush of relief. 

Linnea hesitates, and now, her hands are curled into the tightest fists she’s ever seen. “But, I’m not sure if I want to be a werewolf,” she confesses. “I’m already _other_ in Skyrim. An elf raised by a Nord who’s now the Last Dragonborn. I’ll hunt with you and follow the tenets of the Circle, but you will have to ask me to become a wolf later when at least some of this calms down.”

“In Markarth?” Aela asks. 

“No, in Skyrim before Alduin cracks the world open and ends time,” Linnea whispers in a voice that has been carved too thin with a heavy burden. 

Aela takes in a deep breath and reaches for her lover’s hands. “Then, promise me one thing in return,” she quietly says. 

“What?”

Aela runs a thumb over the back of Linnea’s hand and pleads, “Stay safe. You will not let me follow you to the ends of the world, but I will not let you go without having some sort of assurance that you will be safe.” She can feel the calluses worn into Linnea’s hands after years of hard work, but even then, her skin is soft compared to fur or hide or armor. “You will not have the teeth or claws of a wolf to give you aid or the fleetness of foot that the form gives you, so you will need something else,” Aela tells her. 

Linnea stubbornly purses her lips and says,”I have healing potions.”

“Healing potions weren’t enough in the tunnels of Markarth,” Aela counters. “I’m not the first one to propose magic, but please, if anything, Linnea, learn how to cast one healing spell. You’re a high elf; you have pools of mana to use. You don’t have to set something on fire. Just a small spell to make sure you have enough life and fight left in you to live another day.”

“Magic?” Linnea helplessly repeats. She pulls her hand away from Aela’s grasp and turns it over to stare at her bare palm. “I can’t do that, Aela. I know absolutely nothing about magic except for the Shouts, and I don’t even know if they count as traditional magic. I was never trained to do magic at all!” Her voice pitches upward with each advancing word, and Aela can see the fear deep in her eyes. 

Magic. Admittedly, Aela can’t do a single bit of magic, and she takes more pride and admiration in the hard-won, battle-forged skill of a warrior, archer, or even a sneaking rogue over the soft, time-steeped talent of a mage. But even she can’t deny the fact that it’s _useful_. But right now, Aela can see the way the quiet fear roils deep inside Linnea. Magic is not the domain of the Nords; magic is more like the lifeblood of the elves rather than the dominion of the snowy north. Perhaps if Linnea was raised among the Bretons, Aela wouldn’t see such fear, but this is Skyrim and Aela loves a woman who has spent too many years trying to conform to a culture that hates the one she received at birth. 

Still, Aela forges onward to say, “Linnea, I cannot bear the thought of living without you, and if you won’t let me protect you on your journeys, then please do this for my ease of mind.” She reaches for Linnea’s hand once more. “One. Just one spell.”

Linnea stares at their hands and slowly intertwines her fingers with Aela’s. “Will this make you worry less about me?” she asks. 

“I hope so,” Aela honestly says. “You have a tendency to throw yourself into life-threatening situations almost every day. One would think your sense of survival is skewed.”

“Oh, now that’s too much, my love,” Linnea chuckles. She cracks a small smile. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

“Barely.”

Linnea leans in to peck Aela’s cheek before she pulls back and sighs, “Alright, I’ll go to Winterhold. There’s that College of Mages there, right? I’ll go there and I’ll learn one spell before coming back to Whiterun.”

“Good,” Aela murmurs. “Thank you, my heart.”

Linnea tips her gaze down and doesn’t meet Aela’s eyes, but she says, “Now that I think about it, I think the College of Mages sent me a letter when I was young, asking if I wanted to learn magic.” Wryness makes her lips quirk upward as she snorts, “A side-effect of having a famous mother, I suppose. Almost everyone knows that Ingrid Thorn-bow picked up a magical child from the ruins of the war. They just never expect the child to be elven.”

“A lack of foresight on their part,” Aela tuts. “You are not Thalmor, you are not the enemy. You are nothing but Nord through and though, my love.” She pours as much conviction into her voice as she can, and her own faith and love for Linnea warms her tone as she continues. 

Linnea lifts up her gaze, and Aela can see the love brimming in her eyes. Her hand tightens on Aela’s own hand as she softly says, “Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

Anenya has never doubted the Third Aldmeri Dominion.  
  
She never falters, even when they ask her to quell the rebellion starting to spark up in Valenwood. She never hesitates, even when Bosmer mothers clutch at her heels and beg her to save their children. She never stops, and lightning rains down on the living forests with every gesture of her outstretched hand.   
  
The Bosmer retaliate with the Wild Hunt. Anenya always dismissed them as nothing more than local lore and village folktales, but as she stares at the seething forest ahead of her, her eyes grow wide with horror. The chanting swells to a crescendo, and then, the first Bosmer stumbles out of the underbrush. He raises his head to look at her, and his eyes turn wild: thin slits for pupils and irises blown wide with yellow. He smiles, but then, the smile tears wide open to reveal slavering jaws with teeth that shouldn’t be as large, as long, as sharp. He falls to the ground, limbs twitching and bones breaking and reforming into new shapes. When the Bosmer rises again, he is no longer mer and instead, beast. The sound of chanting ends and the sound of cracking bones replaces it.   
  
Anenya prepares to hold her ground, and her orders bubble up her throat, waiting to be issued. But then, that first Bosmer lunges at one of her agents and tears her throat out with nothing more than a snap of his teeth over her jugular. Blood spills out, carotid artery snapped, throat open to reveal the hyoid, white bone amongst the red. The Bosmer raises his head, and Anenya can’t find a former trace of the former mer left inside the beast. Now, Anenya hesitates. She swallows down her initial orders and calls for a retreat instead. They cannot win this in hand-to-hand combat; they need ranged weapons and magic flung far and wide to fight this.   
  
She brings down a storm to cover them as they run, and her Justiciar robes flap around her legs as she sprints towards their base. The Bosmer come pouring out of the woods in infinite shapes that she could barely describe. The wildness consumes them and turns them feral, and her fellow Justiciars scream as they fall under the waves of attacks. The sounds of their bodies being eaten alive tear through the air and make the entire ground vibrate with the force of the Bosmer pack and the magic the Justiciars try to retaliate with. Some of the trees even tear themselves out of the ground to fall down on her Thalmor brigade. Anenya grits her teeth and runs even harder.   
  
One Bosmer lands on her back, claws digging through her armor and into her flesh, and Anenya falls. The Bosmer tumbles with her, and when Anenya tries to fight back, she sees the Bosmer’s eyes blown wide with bloodlust and patterned over with a strange kind of scale that overlaps between her arched eyebrows. Anenya bites back the pain that threatens to scream out from her throat, bites her tongue down, and instead, she forces sparks to her fingers and presses her hands against the Bosmer’s skin. Lightning rattles through the Bosmer before jumping bodies and chaining more electricity with the next enemy nearby. The Bosmer screeches, and Anenya takes the opportunity to sprint away.   
  
When she reaches camp with too many wounds and not enough soldiers, she roughly says, “Burn them. Burn them all. Raze everything down to the ground.” One soldier hesitates, and Anenya rounds on him to snap, “Did you not hear me? There’s no hope for this sector. They’ve gone feral. Kill them all. I don’t want a single one left alive.” She doesn’t care if there are Justiciars left in that sector. The Wild Hunt is too dangerous to be left alone.   
  
Anenya turns, heedless of the blood spilling over the deep claw wounds in her back, and she almost stumbles when she adds too much weight to one damaged leg. Still, she raises her hands up to the sky and forces her body to bend to her will as she summons down a storm to ravage the forest. The air grows hot, and static charge crackles across her skin. The taste of ozone grows heavy on the back of her throat as she watches the Wild Hunt leap and bound closer and closer. Then, she claps her hands together and the first lightning bolt comes sizzling down on the first body she sees. One of her Thalmor agents. Pity. She claps her hands again, and the rumble of thunder answers her call. Now, lightning comes raining down, splitting bodies and charring flesh, and Anenya watches as the rest of the remaining Thalmor join in. Bosmer and trapped Thalmor alike all burn in the immolation in front of Anenya, and she watches the scene with bitter eyes.   
  
No hesitation. You do what you must for the Third Aldmeri Dominion.   
  
Later, she never shakes the nightmares from that night. She wakes up screaming and with the vision of feral eyes burned in the back of her sight. The shadows of trees make her flinch, but she remains in Valenwood to finish the rest of her work. She stamps out the miserable little Bosmer who have no idea what kind of blessing they are rejecting, and she watches with indifference as they all bleed out in front of her. Even though they’re elf-shaped now, Anenya knows what the shape of their secrets are, hidden deep between their arteries and their veins. The Bosmer have infinite shapes trapped in the marrow of their bones, and Anenya would rather kill them like this than to endure the Wild Hunt again. Let the rest of Valenwood know what the price of dissidence is.   
  
Anenya receives high accolades for her work in Valenwood as well as a promotion. They call her Stormcaller for her valiant defense amidst the feral woods, and Anenya merely bows and accepts. She does not hesitate when they give her the next orders and her next assignment. After all, she still has no doubts for the Dominion. Later, when she has her child, her precious Lindiriel, she does not hesitate to give her to the Dominion when they ask for her.   
  
But one day, Lindiriel comes toddling up to Anenya with her hands wide open for a hug. Anenya sweeps her daughter up and cradles her close to her chest. Although Lindiriel’s getting bigger, Anenya still swings her around just the way she likes it. “Mama, they say you were really really good at your job,” Lindiriel says after her first initial squeal of laughter.   
  
“Really now?” Anenya murmurs as she takes her daughter to her bedroom.   
  
Lindiriel laughs brightly and says, “Yeah, mama! They say you went to a big big place with lots of trees and did a great job!”   
  
Anenya stills. A flash of memory flickers past her eyes, tenebrous and wild. Valenwood. The scars running deeply down her back — just centimeters short of striking her spine and all the nerves running down the knobs of her vertebrae — ache too much. Lindiriel pauses before tapping her mother’s face with her chubby hands. “Mama, are you okay?” she asks plaintively.   
  
Anenya nuzzles her daughter and whispers, “Yes, Mama is okay. Tell me what you learned in school today.”   
  
Lindiriel brightens and starts waving her arms to mimic what she did. “We talked about you in historee,” she says, stretching the word “history” out into long syllables. “And I said I was gonna be just like you, Mama. And then Ondo laughed and said I wasn’t gonna be. And then I punched Ondo in the face.”   
  
“Lindiriel, what did I say about punching little Ondolemar?” Anenya chides. “Now I have to go apologize to his father for your actions.”   
  
Lindiriel doesn’t look sorry at all, but she does mumble, “Sorry, Mama. But I promised not to kick Ondolemar. You never said anything about punching him.”   
  
“Lindiriel.”   
  
“Sorry, Mama.”   
  
Anenya sets her daughter down in bed and tucks a stray strand of hair behind her daughter’s hair. Even though she’s so young, she’s already taking after Anenya herself. The same shade of hair, the same eyes, and the same sparks of magic crackling off her fingertips. Anenya feels a little cold when she thinks about how Lindiriel wants to be like her. She would rather die a thousand times over amongst the Wild Hunt than to send her daughter to a place like Valenwood.   
  
“In time, Lindiriel, in time,” Anenya tells her. “When you are older and wiser and stronger, then you can go out into the world and show them what you can do. But for now, you can stay here in the Isles with me.” Anenya smiles at her daughter and pinches her cheek as she chuckles, “And I want you to go and apologize to Ondolemar. We do have a reputation to keep up.”   
  
Lindiriel’s face scrunches up into a frown as she complains, “But I don’t want to.” Anenya gives her daughter a look, and Lindiriel relents. She slumps forward into her mother’s lap, face down, and says with a muffled voice, “Ondolemar keeps making fun of me. I’ll show him. I’m going to beat him in school.”   
  
Anenya smoothes her daughter’s hair and says, “I’m sure you will.” She takes one long, heavy look at the lightning bolt gracing the back of her daughter’s neck and offers up one fleeting prayer to Auri-el for her daughter’s safety.   
  
Sure enough, as the years pass, her daughter rises to the top of her class. She excels in destruction magic, taking lightning in her bare hands and striking practice target after target down with deadly accuracy. Anenya watches as her daughter leaves for her first mission. She’s so young, but she brings back the heads of two Blades with a childish smile. That scares Anenya. That smile on her daughter’s face completely contradicts the red staining her daughter’s skin with a color darker than rust. Her hands shouldn’t be coated with blood this early, this _young_ . Anenya can’t bring herself to frown though. Not when her daughter is looking at her with so much pride and simmering expectance in her bright eyes. Instead, Anenya places a kiss on her daughter’s forehead and tells her, “You’ve done well.”   
  
Lindiriel surpasses Ondolemar and then others in her cohort like Valrendil or Elanwe. They name her Stormbinder: a clear connection back to her mother’s epithet. Anenya almost has to wonder if this is the Thalmor’s own way of telling a joke. She doesn’t know what the punchline will be yet though. Lindiriel’s kill count rises, and the Blades die off in response, almost to extinction. All three are children of other high-ranking Justiciars within the Dominion, and at dinner parties, they all tell her how proud she should be of her daughter. Admittedly, they’re all compliments tinged with jealousy, but Anenya merely nods and dips her head as a thanks.   
  
When the Great War comes to ravage Tamriel in another bloody fight, Anenya receives a notice from the Thalmor. Lindiriel is to be deployed to Cyrodiil with her cohort for undercover missions while Anenya is to lead a regiment in a different legion of troops. Anenya has never hesitated to send her daughter out before, but now, she wonders if this is the right thing to do. To send her daughter out into yet another battlefield is a prospect that lodges between the set of her rib cage and settles underneath her heart with a hitter of fear. The previous times were all under the cover of night or infiltration missions in civilian areas. Anenya glances behind her to the door of her daughter’s room. She has the highest kill count. She’s never been critically injured in battle before. She’s always come back home, smiling after a job well done. So, Anenya takes the missive to her daughter. Her daughter smiles widely when she sees the words scrawled across the paper, and Anenya forces a smile on her face as well to match her daughter.   
  
Later, Anenya receives a notice on the same color of paper as she did the first time around. But this time, the edges of the paper are coated in soot and stained with rust-red blood. It tells her that her daughter perished with the rest of her cohort during the battle at the Imperial City. “Your daughter did contribute significantly towards the battle,” the note reads. “Lightning came to strike the city multiple times with one striking the White-Gold Tower itself. Quite impressive for a mage her age. Know that your daughter’s death was not in vain because it was for the Third Aldmeri Dominion. By my hand and seal.”   
  
Anenya stumbles, and she feels like she’s coated in darkness once more. Her scars twinge with pain, and she drops the note to the ground. When someone runs over to steady her, she can barely make out what they’re saying. She can see his lips moving, but the only sound she hears is the sound of her own heartbeat pounding too hard and echoing in the chambers of her ears. She sinks down to the ground on her knees, and her fingers curl into tight fists, heedless of the soft dirt she upturns and catches underneath her fingernails. 

She changes her mind. This is worse than Valenwood, worse than the Wild Hunt, worse than the raven-yellow eyes of the wolf-edged teeth she saw in the Bosmer. She understands the desperation of those Bosmer mothers now. The same longing for their children’s safety and the same grief courses through her veins, and she wonders if this is the gods’ way of taunting her.  
  
Anenya has never doubted the Third Aldmeri Dominion before, but now, by her hand and seal, Anenya changes her mind and looks at the world with the grief of a broken mother. There is hesitation now, and it snaps through her, sun-sharp and bitter-cold.

 

* * *

 

His is a heart that does not beat with his body. His is a heart born of the earth rather than the womb of his mother. Thorn and bramble and briar cage a thrumming, thumping thing that fuels his body onward in the miasma of the world, and he sees all the clearer for it (or so the hagravens tell him).

The Briarheart lifts his head to scent the air. Nettle and green pine. Nothing out of the ordinary. There’s a trace of mountain flower on the air too. He turns and resumes his path on his daily patrol, but then, he pauses. The beating of his heart tells him to scent again. 

When he does, he can find the scent of smoke curling through the air. This is no wood-smoke, no smoke from leaf or dry twig, no smoke made from the bellows of his people, no tang of hazel and mushroom to it. This is the smoke of fury made incarnate: brimstone and sulfur and fire born from scale and tooth and howling screech. 

The Briarheart jerks his vision upward to see a silhouette circling overhead before tucking its wings closer into its side to plunge downward. He breaks into a sprint now, and when he sees another person on his patrol, he cries out, “Dragon!” Then, he turns around to face the dragon and hold it off while the other one runs to let the main camp now. Nothing can hurt the hagravens — those valuable creatures of bird-bone and blood, the ones who ripped his weak flesh heart out of the cage of his bony ribs and replaced it with the vitality of the earth itself — and the Briarheart clenches his teeth. 

The blast of fire that’s bound to hit him never comes. Instead, he hears a voice bellow out syllables in a language that he can’t quite comprehend. The voice speaks like a dragon. There are syllables that grind against each other in this language that sounds like it hails from the sky and the mountains hewn out of stone. The Briarheart peers around to see a blast of force knock the dragon back into the nearby cliff just before it can land. A woman stands to the far right, and she straightens up to draw her bow. She fires arrow after arrow into the dragon, aiming for the wings and the eyes. She lands one in the eye of the dragon, but the rest of her arrows tear through the wing of the dragon. 

The dragon bellows with rage and spits a few syllables back at the woman. She dives behind a rock just in time to avoid a plume of fire. The dragon hisses with frustration before it flaps its great wings and rises in the air once more. 

The Briarheart flickers his gaze between the woman and the dragon before deciding that the huge, winged creature with fire breath is the greater threat. He hefts his sword and readies himself for battle. 

The dragon takes one spiral before landing heavily back on the earth. While its focus is on the woman, he takes the opportunity to slash at the dragon’s side. His sword cuts through the thin membrane of the wing, and although little blood pours out, the dragon bellows. 

The woman — and this _must_ be the dragon-throated one of legend — tears her head back to shout something in return, and the dragon stumbles under the weight of the force. The Briarheart does not say any word of his own and hacks into the dragon instead. This time, he finds purchase between the scales and drives his blade in deep. 

The dragon roars and swings its tail at him. The Briarheart ducks, but the dragon bends its great head and exhales fire that the Briarheart cannot escape. He tries to roll out of the way, but the fire licks over his legs. Pain sears through his body and shoots through his nerves, but he forces himself upward. The dragon-throated one shoots a volley of arrows at the dragon and draws its attention away from him. He winces with pain but resumes fighting. 

Blow after blow, blast after blast, and pain after pain. That is what it takes to make the dragon’s lifeblood spill out and splash onto the upturned, clawed-over earth. Despite the ash and char coating the soil, the pools of dragon blood sink deeply into the ground and make dangerous spots of mud that the Briarheart almost slips on. But the final blow comes from the dragon-throated one who seems to tear words out of her throat and sews them into a scream that shakes the same ground that the Briarheart stands upon. It is devastating, and the dragon falls in an array of radiant light that burns through the flesh, leaving only bone behind. The light rushes into the dragon-throated one, and then, there is only silence. 

Sound trickles back slowly for the Briarheart. First, the sound of the wind comes back, high and whistling past the carved and now-charred cliffs. Then, the Briarheart can hear the thumping of the earth, resonating both in his heart-that-is-not-his-flesh and in his ears. Finally, he hears the dragon-throated one approach. Her steps squelch against the wet earth and then pad softly over the ash, but she continues until she reaches him. Her eyes are faintly glowing with the same radiant light that suffused the dragon in its death throes, but slowly, the color of her irises settle back into green. 

The Briarheart tries to heft his weapon up to attack her, but he buckled under the weight of his weapon and the pain that wracks through his burnt body. “You with heart of sky instead of heart of flesh or heart of earth,” he rasps out. “Dragon-throated one, we know of your betrayal of the Mad King below the stone and among the silver veins.”

“Madanach?” she asks. The sound of her traitor voice grating over the syllables of that near-sacred name makes him hiss, and she pauses. “The Forsworn King of Cidna Mine,” she carefully says. “Yes, I killed him.”

The Briarheart snarls with anger and tries to surge up to claw her head off, to run his fingernails through every vein of her body, to let her death spill through his hands like the kong’s death surely did through hers. The burns across his legs and his torso prevent him from moving any further though. His heart carved of wood and magic beats too hard against his chest, almost out into the open air, but even that is nothing compared to the level of damage he’s sustained. “You have killed more than just him,” he finally pants out. “You have killed many of my people, dragon-throated one.”

“Because they were trying to kill me as well,” she replies. “Something about wanting to use my flesh and something else about territory. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not die. Besides, I’m now responsible for my people in the city. Your people hunt them down, so I do the same for them.” She sighs and starts to shuffle through her rucksack for something. “Hold still, I’ll find a healing potion for you,” she murmurs. “Maybe this is why Aela keeps trying to make me learn some healing spells. Can’t help but admit that it would be handy right now.” She pulls out a slim glass vial filled with red potion and says, “Come on, open your mouth. It’s a healing potion.” She eyes him carefully and adds, “It’s not poison. If I wanted to kill you, I’d just use my dagger instead of wasting good potion. Come on now.”

“Why would you heal me?” the Briarheart suspiciously asks. 

The dragon-throated one shrugs and says simply, “You helped me in the battle. One good turn for another. I’ll take my leave after this, and after that, it’ll be like we never met. Easy.”

The Briarheart stares at her for a long time, and splinters of seconds bleed into minutes. Despite the thorned heart that pushes brambles into his veins, he pauses. For just a moment, it feels like he’s remembered the ghost of the man he was before the heart of earth and briar. Grudgingly, the Briarheart opens his mouth and lets the dragon woman pour the healing potion down his throat. Almost instantly, he can feel the potion spread warmth through his body, and some of his burns start to knit themselves together. He sighs with relief and then pins the woman with a steady gaze. 

“I have nothing to repay you with except for my words, dragon-throated one, so mark them well,” he tells her in a creaking voice. “Be wary of the Nords. They have no thought except for themselves, and they are selfish, brutish creatures. Oh, they call my people monsters, but my people and I are those who have truly taken the wild into us unlike the Nords who merely claim to have the blood of mountains and snow in them. They have no true heart to them.” He shakes his head and continues, “Be wary, dragon-throated one. The Nords will see your ears and your voice and your eyes and see that you are different. Always. You will never escape the confines of your flesh when you are with them. Even when the battle ends and the war settles, that part of them will never change.”

“But I am Nord,” the dragon woman snaps back. She’s bristling now as she continues, “My mother is Nord, my lover is Nord, and Skyrim is my country.”

“That will mean nothing to the likes of the rest of the Nords,” the Briarheart testily replies. “Don’t you understand, dragon-throated one? You are and will be eternally separated from the rest of the world.” He gestures to the skeleton of the dragon that lies behind the woman. “Even if they ignore the points of your ears and the slant of your eyes, you who will fight winged time himself will _never_ be able to return to the fold and be as if you never were what you are now.” The Briarheart gives her a cracked smile and says, “Trust me, I know what it is like to be sundered from yourself and become something new.” 

His earthen, rooted heart beats faster against his chest, unfurling with the relief from the healing potion, and he knows that it will make green light streak across his veins and eyes. _Power from the earth itself,_ a hagraven whispered to him once. _A gift that, once taken, can never be given back._ The dragon-throated one does not understand, but the Briarheart knows that she will one day. When the Nords turn their back on her, when they claim her as hero but not countryman, when they fall back into their petty struggles in the civil war that rages beyond the war of his own in the Reach and in Markarth, the dragon-throated one will understand. 

He smiles a wide, gaping smile of wood and bone and tooth before roots unfurl from his burns and sink deep into the ground to replenish him again. “Fly, dragon-throated one,” he murmurs. “Before the world dictates that we fight each other once more.”

The woman gazes at him for a while, steady and unflinching, but she finally shoulders her bow and slings her rucksack back. “Take care,” she says. “May the gods watch over you.” She turns and begins to walk back to wherever she came from.

The Briarheart watches as he roots to the ground. Slowly, the earth takes his mind over, and when his body heals, he finds that he has no other thought in the wood and shell of his body other than the arrhythmic heart that is not his. The only thought he has is thorn and bramble and briar. 

Nothing else. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i pickpocketed the briarheart from a forsworn briarheart once while i was playing thru one of the quests around markarth. didn't expect the man to fall over dead but he did. pour one out for that briarheart 😔


	7. Chapter 7

“She hasn’t been back in a while,” Sapphire comments. “Bet you scared her off, you big lout. She looked like a goody two-shoes too. Just watch as she rats us out to every city in the area.”

Brynjolf looks up from his mug of ale. “Have some more faith in me, lass,” he drawls. “You can’t deny that she would make a good thief, and she hasn’t reported us from what I can tell. “ He gestures over to the door of the tavern. “Besides, she’ll never be able to find us in the Ratway again, and you’re still bitter about how she caught you picking that lock in the town square.”

Sapphire eyes him with a dirty look and takes a swig of her own ale. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and says, “She found her way down here once accidentally, and that was a fluke. If anything, the person _who was supposed to watch my back_ should have caught her first. That should be all pure luck on her part.”

“But will she be able to have that kind of luck again?” Brynjolf returns.

“Seems to me that we have a lack of that around here,” Delvin cuts in. He leans back against his chair and yawns a bit before he says, “Maybe she got caught by the authorities.”

“Not that I’ve heard of,” Brynjolf says. He drinks, swallowing the half-bitter ale down with a great gulp, and considers the chances of the lass getting caught. Her feet were virtually silent, and although he doesn’t know how good she would be with a pair of daggers, she seemed to know her way around a bow. Nimble fingers, she had. That would probably serve her well when lockpicking too. Brynjolf would like to think that he’s good at picking out the right kind of people to join the guild, but Sapphire has a point. She hasn’t been back in a while.

He gets up from his seat and drops off his now-empty tankard at the counter. Brynjolf whistles a little bit as he strides back to the Guild. No doubt Mercer Frey has more work for everyone to do, and by extent, more work for _him_ to do. He can’t really complain though; it’s a side-effect of being second-in-command. 

He’s about to head over to Mercer first, but then, he sees a tall figure drop in from the hidden passageway leading to Riften above. It’s the lass. He quickly changes his direction and hurries over. “Well, well, color me impressed, lass,” he says as he comes up to her. “I wasn’t certain I’d ever see you again. Did someone show you the entrance or did you find that yourself?” He squints at her and realizes that she’s soaked through with rainwater and red’s starting to seep out through the cracks of her armor and her clothes. 

“Getting here was easy,” she rasps out with a bit of a cheeky grin. Pain shoots across her face and she doubles over. 

“Hey now, lass, don’t die on me,” he says as he hurries to support her. She’s taller than him by a little bit, but she’s lighter than he expects. “Come on, Niruin, Vipir! Grab some potions, clear a bed!” Brynjolf looks down at her and asks, “Damn, what happened to you?”

Linnea’s only reply is to press a burlap bag into his hand. Inside, there’s a substantial amount of gold inside, and she coughs out, “Their debts are paid. You can leave them alone now.”

Brynjolf hasn’t heard any bellyaching from Haelga or Bersi Honey-Hand, so he has no idea how this _elf_ managed to get them to pay up without smashing their possessions or threatening them. Still, they’re debts paid back to the Guild, and he slips it into a pouch at his belt before he hoists her up again. “Come on, up you go, lass,” he says. “Let’s get you some potions.”

Niruin comes back and dribbles some healing potions into her open mouth. Vipir jerks his thumb over to a bed that’s been cleared. Brynjolf shoots him a dirty look, and Vipir shrugs, “You’re the one that asked me to clear a bed. Might as well use the bed of the person that asked.”

Brynjolf puts the girl on the bed and watches as some color returns to her too-pale face. She coughs a bit and rainwater soaks into the sheets as she turns to one side. Along her left side, there’s a long gash that’s half-clotted and half-festering. “What _happened_ to you?” he breathes out.

Niruin starts swabbing at the wound with a soaked rag, and Linnea lets out a sharp hiss of pain. Niruin continues the work and tsks, “Be grateful it isn’t Vipir that’s doing this. Stay still.” He starts to pour a different potion on the wound, and it starts to smoke as it burns out the pus from the wound.

Between gasps of pain, Linnea manages to say, “Dwemer centurion.”

“By Talos, lass, you went up against a _dwarven centurion?”_ Brynjolf exclaims. He’s absolutely aghast. That takes more courage than most have in their bones. Even _he_ wouldn’t do something as hare-brained as that if he was alone as Linnea seemed to have been. 

She gives him another forced smile before she clenches her teeth and holds back a scream. Niruin starts to force the flesh to knit together by pouring a different potion and packing in a poultice between the open seams of the wound. “I was looking,” she pants out. “For gold. And an urn.”

Brynjolf looks down at the pouch on his belt and reaches for the burlap bag. When he opens the bag, he sees not Imperial septims but coins hammered with a Dwemer design. “You’ve got a bleeding heart,” he mutters under his breath. “Worst thing for a thief to have.”

“I think my arm is bleeding rather than my heart,” Linnea manages to laugh out. “And I still snuck out of the ruins, a little worse for wear, but still alive.” She looks over at Niruin who’s begun bandaging up her arm and murmurs, “Maybe Aela is right.”

Brynjolf can only shake his head with utter bemusement at this hare-brained new recruit of his. “Where do you plan to go next with that half-torn arm of yours then?” he asks.

She looks around for her rucksack that she dropped when she stumbled in. By now, the rest of the Guild has gathered around her, and Vex hoists the bag up. “Looking for this?” she asks.

Linnea gratefully nods and says, “I’ll have to go to Markarth next, I have to drop off some parts for someone there.” She cranes her neck looking for Delvin and Vex before she asks, “Any job I can do in Markarth while I’m there?”

“And you still want to do a job,” Brynjolf sighs out.

Linnea exhales out a long, sibilant breath of relief as Niruin pours over one last potion that seems to be more soothing than the other ones. She cracks open a single eye to look at Brynjolf and replies, “Might as well. I didn’t join up to do nothing.”

“That you didn’t,” Mercer now says. The rest of the thieves part for him to step through, and he looks over Linnea with a critical eye. “Delvin, find her something there. There’s enough nobles in that stone hell to do a bedlam or numbers job.” He turns on his heel without waiting for a reply, but just before he leaves, he says, “Bring back more next time.”

Linnea’s eyes flash with something that Brynjolf thinks is defiance but she doesn’t reply. Instead, she looks over to Niruin and says, “Thank you.”

“If anyone, you should be thanking Brynjolf,” Niruin snorts. He straightens up and cleans Linnea’s blood off his hands with the reddened rag. “You’re the one soaking his bed with rainwater and blood. Not what he’d rather have his bed soaked with, I suspect.”

That makes both Linnea and Brynjolf laugh, and Linnea shakes her head and says, “I’m already taken and happily so.”

“Good,” Vex drawls out. “Can’t imagine anyone who’d want to fuck someone like Brynjolf.”

Brynjolf arches a brow and informs her, “More than you could possibly imagine with your small mind, Vex.” A small chuckle escapes him though, and he looks over at the new recruit with a sense of pride. Even if she does have a bleeding heart, maybe this is a sign that the Guild’s luck will turn around. 

 

* * *

 

The College of Winterhold lies at the very edge of the howling sea that constantly batters against the jagged cliff that barely holds up the foundations of the place. The entire town of Winterhold whispered about how forbidden magic and the hubris of mages had to be responsible for such a tragedy. Linnea can’t help but agree a little bit. Hubris deals a number of damages; she used to see it almost all the time back home in Solitude. Still, she also has to admit that it is probably magic — from that same exact hubris of the mages — keeping the College together.

She wonders if she should turn back now, but at this point, she’s already here. Linnea can still feel all the scars from Markarth. There’s one that twists over her shoulder and down her back and a few striated burn scars from Madanach. She also has one long, horizontal scar down her forearm from that Dwemer centurion that Niruin had to bind up at Riften. There’s also a number of scars from various dragons, deathless skeletons that clawed their way out of their crypts, and more frostbite spider bites than she’d like. Aela has a point; Linnea does have a way of getting herself into danger. Perhaps it’s a side-effect of being a Dragonborn.

There’s a gatekeeper that blocks the entrance to the College that stops her by crying out, “Halt!” The gatekeeper is Altmer, and as they look at each other, there’s a small exchange of looks. Neither are Thalmor, yet neither are quite Nord. Linnea finds that a little comforting. The gatekeeper looks her up and down as she says, “Welcome to the College of Winterhold. I am Faralda, one of the senior Wizards here. What brings you to our doors?” Bitterness curls her lips downward as she says, “I will advise you to speak to the Jarl of Winterhold if you only wish to complain. If, however, you seek something more, I would be happy to assist you.”

“I…” Linnea trails off. She looks down at her worn leather armor and the bracers at her wrists. The answer lies unspoken on her tongue, but it’s hard to get the words out properly. “I’m here to learn magic,” she finally says.

For a moment, Faralda seems a little stunned at her request. “Every Altmer has a spark of magic to them, do they not? More than what Nords can typically boast, not that they ever _want_ to boast about magic anyways,” she says.

“Will you let me through the doors then?” Linnea asks.

“Perhaps,” Faralda slowly says, drawing out the single word into a long sound. Her voice turns soft and almost whisper-thin as she asks, “But what is it you expect to find within?"

“I don’t know,” Linnea honestly returns. She gestures to the bow strapped onto her back and says, “I’m a hunter by trade, not a mage. I came here to learn how to do something new, not to show off something that I don’t know how to do.”

Faralda’s expression sours a bit, and she haughtily says, “We don’t take in every person who demands to learn magic.” Her voice drops as she breathes out, “Some of us unravel the mysteries of Aetherius while some of us gain enough power to raze empires and raise kings through fire, ice, and illusion.” She stills and her voice returns to its normal volume. “These are not things so easily gained though. You must work and prove yourself to obtain them. Those who wish to enter must show some degree of skill with magic. A small test, if you will.”

Frankly, Linnea could care less. She doesn’t need to know the inner workings of immortality or wield enough fire to burn down a nation. That’s not what she’s here to learn. She just needs to learn how to knit back flesh and bone together enough to keep her standing. That’s all Aela wanted from her, right? Some backup plan to keep Linnea safe in case she ever ran out of potions. Still, she stands there, baffled at the request. “Do you want an item or something?” she asks. “What is the point of coming here to learn magic if I have to perform magic in order to gain entrance?”

Faralda does not answer but only taps her foot expectantly. Linnea sighs and stares at her hands. She doesn’t think the gatekeeper would take it very well if she were to Shout here. She doesn’t want to be known as the Dragonborn here either. She just wants to learn enough magic to satisfy Aela’s expectations and then go on her merry way.

Linnea glances up at the gatekeeper with one more look, and finally, Faralda sighs with pity and says, “Reach deep into the very core of your being. You’re Altmer, it should be easier for you than most others. Search within yourself and see what you can discover. If you cannot do even that, then the College cannot help you no matter how much you may wish to learn to cast magic.”

Linnea doesn’t know how to do that, but she tries to start by closing her eyes. The first thing that she finds is the Voice, bubbling and pushing against her vocal cords, and she can feel the Words of Power pressing against her tongue, as if they were dragons themselves that wanted to take flight into the chilly air and leave power in their wake. However, she tries to push past and search for something even more.

For a second, she thinks there is nothing. Linnea can hear Faralda sigh with disappointment and the crunch of her footsteps as she turns away from Linnea. But then, there is a crackle deep at her very core. It almost feels like the Voice when she uses it – sky-wild and vicious – and she draws it out of her like she would draw a bowstring. Her bow has the sky carved into it and she pictures those runes in her mind. Runes for sky, for cloud, for fury and thunder and lightning in all of its glory. In Linnea’s mind, she draws back the bow and lets an arrow fly. She can taste ozone at the back of her throat, and with a cry that is absent of the Voice but still full of power, she unleashes something that sends a sharp crack through the sky.

Linnea opens her eyes just in time to catch the brief flash of lighting as it arcs down to her outstretched hand. It seems to split the sky in a radiant flash of white, and the sky darkens as clouds begin to roil with the same kind of wildness that Linnea felt inside of her. The thunder soon follows after the lightning in a great roar – just as loud as the dragons themselves – and Linnea feels power shaking through her very bones. Then, silence falls as the thunder slips away.

The feeling of power dissipates from Linnea’s hand, and slowly, she looks over to Faralda who has a wide look of astonishment etched clearly on her features. “T-that’s not a spell a beginner should know,” the gatekeeper says shakily. She takes a careful step forward, and the sound of crunching snow underneath her soles follows her as she moves forward. She has one hand outstretched towards Linnea, glowing with a white light, and she circles around Linnea. “You don’t look any different,” she mutters under her breath. “No sign of a scroll or a curse or a blessing on you.” She stops in front of Linnea. “By all rights, you should just be a normal person.”

Normal is far from any word that could define Linnea’s life right now, but she says nothing. She looks down and sees that there’s a perfect circle of melted snow around her. The ground is scorched, and the hair on the back of her neck and her forearms are standing up. The bolt of lightning tattooed on the back of her neck feels like it's blazing. She can still taste the ozone on her tongue.

Faralda purses her lips and steps aside from the entrance. “Come inside,” she says. “We have much to talk about.”

 

* * *

 

Ulfric Stormcloak is at his wit’s end.

Dragon attacks begin to make their toll on the countryside, and now, his soldiers have more reports about dragonfire and destruction than about Thalmor and Imperials. At this rate, the dragons are more likely to overrun Skyrim than the Empire. Ulfric also hates how this distracts his soldiers away from the true purpose of the war. The focus is no longer on Nord freedom but rather on the scaled beasts that make his people’s lives a living hell.

He hates to admit it now, but he wishes the Dragonborn was here to do something about it.

Ulfric stares at his map and at all the markers that dot the yellowing parchment, and in a sudden burst of frustration, he slams his fist down on the table. The markers rattle from the force of the impact, and Galmar Stone-Fist rushes in. “My jarl, are you alright?” he asks.

Ulfric only lets out a frustrated growl, but then, he tries to rein in his temper. He flattens his palms against the table and snaps, “Any news from the border? From the Thalmor? Anything other than the blasted dragons?”

“The same as the usual news,” Galmar grimly replies. “At this point, I ask you again to reconsider what I’ve already proposed to you.”

Ulfric already knows that’s not an option. Shoving a sword through the jarls’ gullets won’t make a single difference. In fact, it might unite some of the other jarls against him. High King Torygg was only ever meant to be an example. Even if Ulfric would rather die before having elves dictate the fate of men, there is only so much blood that Skyrim can soak up.

“Not that, not yet,” Ulfric wearily says. “We’ve been soldiers for a long time. That doesn’t mean we should be blind to blood and what it means for our people.”

“Fine,” Galmar sighs. He flips through a few more reports before he finds the one he wants. “There’s also been new updates about that party at the Thalmor embassy.”

Ulfric brightens at the mention of an update and straightens up to face Galmar directly. Galmar shuffles through some of the reports he has in his hands to double-check them for any additional information before he says, “Our reports about the escaped prisoners and the stolen dossiers, they’re all connected back to the Blades.”

Ulfric furrows his brow and murmurs, “The Blades? I thought they were virtually gone, wiped out by the Thalmor during the Oblivion Crisis. Besides, what business do they have here in Skyrim?”

“They follow the dragons supposedly,” Galmar reads off the parchment. “Even if they were once protectors of the emperors in Cyrodiil, they still have the dragon-hunter’s legacy. According to one of our scouts, there are still a few Blades remaining that the Thalmor have their sights set on, and the events of that party were the Blades’ work.”

Galmar’s eyes still halfway down the page, and Ulfric arches a brow, waiting. “But the person there at the party who did the Blades’ work…” he trails off. He looks up at Ulfric and meets his gaze head-on as he says, “We have good reason to believe that may have been the Dragonborn.”

“What?!” Ulfric barks out.

Galmar nods grimly and continues, “We managed to obtain a list of the guests present, and there is one Altmer woman who was unaccounted for on the official list. I sent a few agents to ask some questions, and it seems like the woman has similar coloring to the Dragonborn but was wearing Summerset styles and used the same accent as the Thalmor. Later, one of the guests there reported that the Altmer woman disappeared, and soon after, the prisoners were discovered to have been freed.”

Ulfric watches with an intense gaze, and when Galmar stops speaking, he raps his knuckles against the table. “Come now, continue!” he orders. “What other information did you gather?”

“The Thalmor guards were all killed with arrows.”

Ulfric’s breath catches in his throat. Arrows. The Dragonborn was a fine archer, clearly evidenced by her defense of Windhelm when the dragon attacked. An Altmer woman with dark hair and dark eyes who disappeared at the party at just the right time and left behind arrows in her wake. He knows that he shouldn’t make assumptions – his own experience with the Dragonborn taught him that at the very least – but this is something that seems almost undeniable. The Dragonborn was there at the party to undermine the Thalmor.

A brief flash of hope flares up once more in Ulfric’s chest, and he orders, “Do we have contact with the Blades? If not, establish them in any way possible. Send a courier after the Dragonborn. Who else does she have contact with? Get in touch with them as well.”

He turns back to his map and lays down a marker by the Thalmor embassy. This marker has a dragon carved crudely into the top, and although Ulfric has to admit that it’s barely recognizable as a dragon, the meaning of it holds more weight to him in this moment. He holds his breath a moment and then exhales out. The cogs of his mind begin to whirl as he starts to draft a different plan of action.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t let Justiciar Anenya know—“  
  
“What should Justiciar Anenya not know?” a voice says, cutting cleanly through the atmosphere of the room.   
  
The Bosmer scout looks up and swallows hard when he sees the stern face of Anenya, the Stormcaller, staring right back at him. He thought Head Justiciar Anenya retired after the Great War. What is she doing here in Skyrim? He’s heard the stories about her, and even if he wasn’t there when she “cleansed” Valenwood, he still knows about the scars left there. There are still survivors from the Wild Hunt that roam through the night with misshapen limbs and feral eyes. They eat everything from the animals to the remaining Bosmer and new Altmer. Sometimes, they stir the blood of any Bosmer left, call out to the wildness living under their skin, and draw them to them before tearing them open and turning them inside out. Even if the scout had the choice to live in that area of Valenwood or in Skyrim, he would choose Skyrim over and over again despite the north’s bone-aching chill. There are some things leftover from the wildness and the Ehlnofey that Was that he does not wish to see.   
  
The scout exchanges a look with the guard and wonders what to do, but soon, he doesn’t have to make the decision. The retired justiciar steps right between the two and plucks the report right out of the scout’s hands. Her lips purse together as she reads through the words, and the scout quails, fearful of what might happen. The last time one of Elenwen’s servants failed, the entirety of the guards died and the few living prisoners escaped. The scout doesn’t know what happened to that Bosmer that distracted Emissary Elenwen, but he’s sure he doesn’t want to know.   
  
“Ah, Anenya, how kind of you to join us,” he hears Emissary Elenwen say. She looks down at him and sneers, “I believe I told you that report was for certain eyes alone.” 

The scout quakes a little bit in his shoes, and he struggles to come up with some excuse for it. However, the Stormcaller beats him to it and replies crisply, “No need to punish the mer for it. I’m afraid I was the one to snatch it from him. I’ve got an insatiable curiosity, you know.” She holds up the paper between her index finger and middle finger, and then, a spark bursts between them and scorches the paper down to cinders.   
  
Elenwen sighs, “Was that really necessary? You’ve always had the flair for dramatics.”   
  
“You’re very good at keeping documents, Investigator Elenwen. I’m sure you have the full dossier somewhere aside from this abbreviated copy,” Anenya returns. “Or should I say, Emissary Elenwen. What brought on the job change? I thought you enjoyed torturing prisoners.”   
  
“I prefer to call it an investigation rather than torture,” Elenwen says. She narrows her eyes at Anenya and asks, “So, what brings the Stormcaller to this remote and degenerate place of Tamriel? Shouldn’t you be enjoying your blissful retirement in Alinor or perhaps somewhere else in the Isles? I hear Skywatch is lovely at this time of year.”

“You already know why I’m here,” Anenya replies. Her voice is tight and clipped, and she reaches into a small bag at her side for a longer message. “By my hand and seal,” she recites. There’s a large and ornate seal on it. Despite the fact that it’s already broken, the scout recognizes it as one of the major seals from the upper echelon of Thalmor authority. The scout has only seen it once before, but it’s clearly distinct. Anenya levels her gaze at Elenwen and says, slow and steady, “I’m here to take custody of my daughter.”  
  
If Elenwen was angry before, then her face is immaculately furious now. She tries to rein in her expression and return her composure to its former balance, but her lips are thinly pressed together. The scout has seen enough of Elenwen’s rage to know when it’s silently simmering and about to boil over. He takes a step back from her which she thankfully ignores. “Did you already read the dossier?” Elenwen finally asks.   
  
“And Ondolemar’s personally written report,” Anenya confirms. Elenwen glances when Anenya says it, but Anenya is busy putting the message back to see. She glances up and says, “I already have permission from the chief Justiciar as well as the grand council of the Third Aldmeri Dominion.”   
  
“It is good to see another familiar face in Skyrim, but do sit down and let us take care of it for you,” Elenwen tries again. The scout winces a little bit. Even he can see that there’s tension in the lines of her smile. Elenwen ushers Anenya over to her office as she says, “We’re not even entirely sure if this Linnea is the same as your Lindiriel.”   
  
“I’m back in the field, Elenwen,” Anenya flatly says. “I outrank both you and Ondolemar. Don’t think you can get away with everything quite as easily as you did.”   
  
Elenwen bows, but the scout manages to glimpse a snarl marring the Emissary’s face before she dips down completely. “Of course, Stormcaller,” she says. “Of course.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> explicit section beginning with "Aela lies awake in bed with her blood afire." and ends with "She can only hope that Linnea returns quickly."

“General Tullius.”

“At ease, Legate Rikke,” Tullius sighs. He turns around and sees Rikke there. The dark circles under her eyes look more prominent, and her eyes themselves are bloodshot. She was by the battle map before he was with her armor still on and unpolished. Damn woman likely didn’t sleep the night before. He keeps telling her to get some rest, but he suspects that she doesn’t. Why would she when he barely does himself. He’s sure he looks just as exhausted; he just hasn’t seen a mirror for a while.

“Ulfric is planning something, General,” Rikke says without any preamble.

“Is this about Whiterun again, Legate?” Tullius tiredly replies. He looks over at Rikke who has that stubborn set in her jaw again. Never let it be said that Nords were not a stubborn people. Rikke’s gone over the threats to Whiterun over and over with him. Rationally, Tullius knows that Whiterun is important, but at this point, he’s just tired of hearing the same thing and seeing nothing change.

“I’m telling you, Ulfric’s planning an attack on Whiterun,” she repeats. 

Tullius almost wants to ask her why he hasn’t attacked in recent times yet, but he knows that would cross the line with Rikke. So, he shakes his head and returns back to his original work instead, studying the legion formation around the far borders of Whiterun. “He’d be insane to try,” he says as he drums his fingers against the table. “He doesn’t have the men.”

“That’s not what my scouts report, sir,” Rikke says. Her voice is clipped and brusque as she says, “Every day, more join his cause. Riften, Dawnstar, and Winterhold support him, and we’ve noticed some Stormcloak activity here in Solitude.”

At first, Tullius is about to mumble out a reply — one out of the three standard ones he usually tells Rikke to get her to stop talking about it — but the last sentence grabs his attention. He straightens up and faces Rikke as he snaps, “What did you say?”

In _Solitude?_ That takes nerve, even from someone like Ulfric Stormcloak.

“We caught a Stormcloak scout just as she was entering Solitude,” Rikke says. Her face is solemn as she can make it, but even she can’t hide the roiling emotion in her eyes. “She refused to say why she was here, but we questioned her and examined her belongings.”

“And what did you find?” Tullius prompts.

Rikke reaches into her pouch hanging from her belt and pulls out a folded piece of parchment. She wordlessly hands it to Tullius who unfolds it to see the sketch of a woman’s face on the parchment with small words. He reads aloud, “Ingrid Thorn-Bow.” He looks at Rikke who looks grim now.

“The woman who launched a thousand arrows,” she says, slow and steady. “I fought with her during the Great War. We all did, Ulfric, Galmar, Skjor, we all knew her and she knew us. Saved our lives on a good number of times, but it was finally a damned elf’s arrow that shot her down. She survived but had to be discharged.” She shakes her head, but the ghost of a wry smile still crosses Rikke’s lips. “A shame. The woman was a force to be reckoned with and still is if she hasn’t changed since then.”

Tullius looks down and studies the sketch. The woman looks like any other Nord with her hair braided back in the usual style. There’s a scar running down her cheek, but her eyes look forward and an impish smile curves her lips in the drawing. Tullius doesn’t know every Nord that fought in the war, but he vaguely remembers the epithet from somewhere. Rikke clears her throat and says, “If the Stormcloaks are trying to recruit her to their cause—”

“It’s not a cause, it’s a rebellion,” Tullius interrupts.

Rikke’s expression sours, but she replies, “Call it whatever you like, General. The man’s going to try to take Whiterun, and if he has Ingrid Thorn-Bow on his side, that’ll be a major blow to us. The woman’s a veritable icon among the Nordic heroes of the war. Her reputation will significantly bolster his forces.”

“Whiterun…” Tullius murmurs. He looks over to the small image of Whiterun drawn on the map with brown ink and studies the markers around it. There are no Legion markers within the city borders. Jarl Balgruuf, to this day, refuses the Legion’s right to garrison troops in his city, but at least he does the same for the rebel forces.

“You can’t ignore the threat,” Rikke persistently says.

Irritation spikes through Tullius, and he feels the weight of an entire Empire on his shoulders as he snaps back, “Well, if Balgruuf wants to stand outside the protection of the Empire, fine. Let Ulfric and this Thorn-bow woman pillage his city for all I care.”

Rikke only shoots back a dry, unimpressed look back at him. She’s been his second-in-command long enough to lose her respect for him when he gets in these moods. He almost feels chastised when she says, “General.”

“You people and your damn Jarls,” he grumbles. He knows Rikke’s right though. She knows Skyrim better than him, and above all else, she knows Ulfric Stormcloak better than him. He cracks his knuckles and says, “Apologies.” Rikke merely inclines her head, and he takes that as a cue to continue, “If Ulfric’s making a move for Whiterun, then we need to be there to stop him. Draft another letter with the usual platitudes, but this time, share some of your intelligence regarding Ulfric’s plans. Embellish if you have to. We’ll let it seem like it’s his idea.”

“Yes, sir,” Rikke says. She arches a brow and asks, “And Ingrid Thorn-bow?”

“Get someone to contact her and someone else to keep an eye on anyone else who tries to make contact with her,” he says. “Where is she? In Solitude still?”

“As far as I know, she’s lived in Solitude ever since she came back from the Great War,” Rikke answers with a shrug. “Every now and then, she’ll go out and hunt before coming back to sell her catch off for gold.” 

Tullius rolls a marker between his thumb and index finger before he finally says, “Send a courier to Ingrid Thorn-Bow, or better yet, if you knew her during the Great War, then go to her yourself. Find out what the Stormcloaks want from her and where she stands.” He lays the marker down over Solitude, right beside the marker for the Thalmor, and adds one for the Stormcloaks. “Dismissed,” he finishes.

“Sir,” he hears Rikke say. He does not watch her leave, but he hears the sound of her footsteps growing more distant. Only when her footsteps are no longer audible does he slump into a chair by the table. He is exhausted down to the bone, but he cannot rest. Not when the Empire needs him. Not while the Stormcloaks rage outside his doorstep. With one more sigh of breath, Tullius braces himself against the thinning parchment of the worn battle map and heaves himself back up to his feet.

 

* * *

 

Aela lies awake in bed with her blood afire.

By now, Linnea must be halfway to Winterhold.  _ If _ Linnea decided to listen. Aela idly wonders if Linnea would change her course and start digging into the nearest draugr tomb instead of tackling the main problem, but Linnea  _ promised. _ And if there is one thing that Linnea will always do, then it is to keep her promises. Her lover has a loyal heart; Aela trusts that she’ll soon be at Winterhold.

The only thing is that Aela misses her more than anything else, and now, the moons are twitching at her limbs and begging her to run. She can’t run, not yet, and the moons aren’t quite full yet. Still, her wolf tears at her from the inside-out, sending heat through her limbs.

Aela exhales out a hot and heavy breath, and now, as she thinks about Linnea, her breath hitches in her throat. The heat running through her blood now goes downward, and her fingers twitch. Perhaps… Her hand strays downward and slips past the band of her smalls. 

She runs one finger over her clit and almost gasps from the sensation of it. She’s starting to get wet and quickly so. Aela drags the tip of her finger over her folds, and her hips jerk in response. She lets out a hiss. So, this is what’s going to happen. Well, it’s far more amenable than letting her wolf consume her body and revel in a hunt in the middle of a city. Better to do that in a forest; there are less casualties that way.

Her other hand stretches up towards her breasts, and Aela starts to trace the curve of them downwards. Then, as she circles around her clit, she starts pinching her nipples with her other hand. Her nails gently score thin lines down her breasts — a side-effect of not trimming them sooner — but she welcomes them regardless. 

Aela strains towards her hand, seeking out as much contact from her fingers as she can. Her back arches, and her body feels like it’s being pulled taut around the sensation of her fingers. She dips slightly downward, working one finger into herself and then two. She’s not quite wet enough to fit three, but two is plenty for what she needs. She has to choke down a cry when she hits the perfect spot with those two fingers, and she swears she can taste the fire of her own orgasm on the back of her tongue.

She comes down on the high almost as quickly as she arrives, and now, her hand is dripping wet. Aela tilts her chin back, exposing her neck to the night shadows, and shuts her eyes to revel in the sensation of it. The tension bleeds out of her body, leaving her with a pleasant afterglow. It’s nothing like what she does with Linnea, but it eases the edge of missing her so dearly. 

She can only hope Linnea returns quickly.

 

* * *

 

What use is a Dragonborn if she doesn’t even bother to show up?

Delphine slams the next dish down as she washes the dishes. She’s itching for action now after spending so many years silent and still, almost choking with boredom in this bucolic pit called Riverwood. She looks out the window at the cloudless sky and thinks about the great wall with all of its magnificent carvings at Sky Haven Temple. There was so much potential there, so many secrets finally coming to light, and finally something that made her feel like the deaths of all her fellow Blades was _worth_ something in the end.

But now? There’s nothing but silence and stillness in Riverwood again. The only sound she hears right now is the splash of water and her own sigh of frustration. Delphine looks down at the dishes and the soap bubbles beginning to gather, and she wonders if she ever could have expected this during her training or during her missions for the Blades. Spending her days as a harmless innkeeper isn’t something that she wants, and now that a chance at hope is so close, every part of her — the parts she’s kept tamped down and tamed and muzzled — struggles to rise up to the surface.

The sound of visitors opening the door and the sound of stilling music makes her jolt though. It’s rare that Sven ever stops singing, even when his crush draws near. If anything, when the girl he has a sweet spot for comes around to the Sleeping Giant, his singing grows louder and more pronounced. Delphine washes the soap from her hands and wipes them on her apron as she goes out to see who her new guests are. 

“Welcome to Riverwood,” she hears Orgnar roughly say.

The thing she hears next makes her pause. A voice in a Summerset accent replies back softly, “Thank you. May I ask what you have to offer?”

"We got rooms and food. Drink, too. I cook. Ain't much else to tell,” Orgnar replies back in his usual slow manner.

There’s another sigh, but this time, it’s from a different person. “With all due respect, Justiciar Anenya, I cannot see what the purpose of starting here in this wretched town is,” he says in a short, clipped tone. The same accent laces over the words and sends a shiver down her spine. Whether that’s from fury or rage, Delphine can’t tell. She’s spent a life running from the Thalmor, but she doesn’t intend to run now.

Delphine exits and greets the two Thalmor by brightly saying, “Welcome, visitors, to the Sleeping Giant. Can I interest you in some ale or some rooms?”

There are two Altmer standing there, both dressed in Thalmor armor and robes. One of them is undeniably Ondolemar, the head of the Justiciars in Skyrim. Delphine has a whole dossier on him with records of what she thinks he has planned for Skyrim and her best tactics for moving around them. The second Altmer is an older woman, but the thing that sets Delphine’s nerve on edge is how eerily similar she looks to _Linnea._ She has the same facial structure, the same coloring, and the same smile that she’s currently giving Delphine. 

“Good morning, innkeeper,” she says. “Rather than rooms or ale, I believe we’re here to ask some questions. You see, I’m looking for my daughter, and I was wondering if you’ve seen or heard of an Altmer girl passing through.” The smile stays on her face, but Delphine knows that there’s a kind of danger glinting in this Justiciar’s eyes.

“Justiciar Anenya,” Ondolemar grinds out. 

Justiciar Anenya turns her gaze on Ondolemar, and although the smile never drops from her face, the edge of her smile grows cruel and sharp as she glares at Ondolemar. He shuffles his feet and stays quiet, which Delphine marvels at. If Ondolemar is the head of all Justiciars in Skyrim, then this Justiciar Anenya must outrank him by far. Ondolemar lowers his head and finally says, “Yes, Stormcaller.”

That epithet makes Delphine’s blood run cold in her veins. You’d have to be a fool to survive the Great War without knowing about the infamous Stormcaller of the Summerset Isles. Delphine’s never had the misfortune to run across her personally — at least, until now — but she’s heard horror stories about the woman who ran the cleansing of Valenwood. Rumor has it that Justiciar Anenya brought down an entire lightning storm down on the forests to flush out the Bosmer rebels at the price of her own soldiers. Right now, the Justiciar is smiling, but Delphine can just imagine the horrors that this woman has wrought with nothing but her bare hands. 

Delphine lets out a sigh but keeps her innkeeper persona firmly wrapped around her shoulders as she replies, “Nay, sorry. I’ve seen an Altmer girl pass through months and months ago, maybe a few days after the big incident up at Helgen, but after that? Nay.” She left just enough of the truth to escape the Thalmor’s scrutiny but not enough to get either her or Linnea captured.

Anenya’s gaze hones in on Delphine, but she says nothing except for a soft, even hum. Ondolemar, however, cuts in to say, “Is that so? Have you heard of any Altmer named Lady Arenwe then?”

Delphine almost stiffens. Ondolemar must have been at that wretched party. Linnea never said anything more about that party other than to toss Delphine the information and to admit that she burned the Altmer clothing to ashes. Delphine didn’t suspect anything more at the time, but she should’ve known. Ondolemar must have caught a glimpse of Linnea’s neck then. The Thalmor must know by now that they have a lost Child of the Dominion in the wilds of Skyrim. This puts further complications into Delphine’s plans, and she wants to hiss with frustration. 

“No,” she says, still slow and smooth. The same tone that nearly every damn person in Riverwood uses. “I haven’t heard of an Arenwe. Just the girl. Looked half-dead on her feet when she came in though. Covered in soot and dust, poor thing. She must’ve barely survived Helgen, and I honestly can’t blame her.”

“Helgen,” Anenya finally says. She rolls the name of the city on her tongue, almost experimentally, before she looks over at Ondolemar. “Elenwen was presiding over affairs there, wasn’t she? The execution of a certain Ulfric Stormcloak, no?”

“Yes,” Ondolemar grinds out. “They all escaped when the dragon attacked.”

“I see, I see,” Anenya murmurs. “Quite unlike Elenwen to fumble with her prisoners. Perhaps she’s lost her touch.” She looks around the inn once more before she says cordially, “Well, thank you very much for your help. We won’t be needing rooms tonight, but the information was quite welcome. Good day.”

“Goodbye,” Delphine returns. She watches the two leave the inn, and she doesn’t move until the door firmly shuts behind them. “Watch the counter, Orgnar,” she says roughly before she goes back to the dishes. She cranes her head to catch a glimpse of the Altmer through the small window. Now, they’re astride two horses and are trotting out of the town. Only Anenya looks back, and although Delphine knows that Anenya can’t reasonably see her from that distance, it still looks like her gaze is pointed directly at Delphine. 

Delphine shudders a bit before she rushes down to her private room. She begins to whet her blades and fill up the quivers with sharpened arrows. There is no time to lose now.

 

* * *

 

“Faralda, I—”

“Hush,” Faralda hurriedly says back. She ascends the steps of the College with a startling speed, and Linnea struggles to keep up. The wind rushes around her with a vicious, biting cold, and Linnea almost loses her step on the slick, half-broken stone. Faralda looks back just in time to snatch Linnea’s hand and yank her back. “Careful,” the gatekeeper says before rushing onward.

The two enter the College, and Faralda only stops to snap out, “Colette! Guard the doors.” The Breton woman that she speaks to starts to sputter something out, but Faralda only replies in a hushed voice, “I have to go find the Arch-Mage, Colette, now go! Don’t let that bastard Ancano find out.”

At the mention of the Arch-Mage, Colette’s expression goes slack, and she nods before hurrying off in the direction that Linnea and Faralda came from. Linnea cranes her head to see what she plans to do, but Faralda snaps her fingers to get Linnea’s attention again and whispers, “Hurry, we mustn’t let Ancano know. Move, girl, move.”

Linnea ends up following Faralda through the library and up multiple flights of stone stairs. Every now and then, she catches a glimpse of a student or another mage, deep in their studies, and barely anyone looks up to notice her. They’re all far too absorbed in whatever magicka consumes their attention, and she’s thankful for that. Finally, they reach the doors, and Faralda raps the door once, twice, then thrice.

The door opens to reveal a Dunmer mage dressed in elaborate robes, stitched with multiple runes in a shimmering thread, and although he doesn’t appear to look old, he still has some deep furrows in his brow and around his dark-circled eyes. “Faralda,” he says, mildly bemused. “What brings you here to my office? Is the entrance not guarded?”

“I sent Colette to watch my station,” Faralda says as she pushes Linnea inside. 

“And who is this?” the Arch-Mage asks. Or at least, Linnea _assumes_ he’s the Arch-Mage.

“That’s what I’d like to know too,” Faralda grumbles. She shuts the door firmly behind her and starts tracing out a sigil on the door. 

The Arch-Mage raises a brow and says, “My, my, this must be a grave matter indeed. Why such a need for privacy?”

Faralda glances behind her shoulder and says shortly, “Ancano, that’s what.” She resumes drawing her sigil, and Linnea watches with wide eyes as gleaming motes of light follow the movement of Faralda’s outstretched index finger. They embed themselves into the wood of the door as Faralda draws out each and every line in the now-shining sigil. Then, Faralda claps her hands, and the light sinks into the wood until it completely disappears. “There,” she says. She turns around and with a self-satisfied smile, continues, “Now that Thalmor bastard won’t hear us.”

The Arch-Mage sighs at the mention of the word, “Thalmor,” and turns to Linnea. “Good afternoon,” he says. “You are new here, are you not? We have not spoken.”

Linnea was so absorbed in watching Faralda’s magic that she’s taken aback when the Arch-Mage turns to speak to her. “No, sir,” she rushes to say. “I just arrived to the College today.”

“Sir? How quaint,” he chuckles. “Well then, allow me to introduce myself. I am Savos Aren, Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold. I presume you’ve already met Faralda.” He glances over to Faralda and asks, “Tell me what the matter is now.”

“She came here, asking for entrance,” Faralda says. She nods over to Linnea and continues, “Said she was new, wanted to learn and insisted that she didn’t know any magic beforehand. I asked her to demonstrate like I do with any other student, and instead of producing some random spray of magic, she cast _Thunderbolt_. A heavy missile of it too, and it was minutes away from becoming a whole storm.” Faralda’s eyes narrow. “No novice to magic does that, especially with shock as your element.”

Linnea looks over at the Arch-Mage whose expression remains impassive and then back to Faralda who seems frustrated and worried over something that Linnea doesn’t quite understand. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But I’m afraid I’m not quite understanding what the issue is? I just… I just did what you told me to do.”

“And what did Faralda ask you to do?” Arch-Mage Aren asks. 

Linnea helplessly lifts up her hands, palm up, and replies, “She said to reach deep into the core of my being. And I did. I just pulled out whatever I could find. I don’t understand what the lightning means. Isn’t that just proof that I can do magic? I’m Altmer, isn’t it just because of that?”

Arch-Mage Aren lets out a soft sigh before he gestures over to the door. The sigil that Faralda traced on glows white before turning into gold. “Just in case we have visitors,” he lightly says. He then takes a step towards Linnea and reaches out a hand. He twists his hand in a gesture before pinching his index finger and thumb together. Sparks begin to gather in his open palm as he explains, “Destruction magic comes in three elements: fire, frost, and shock.” When he says fire, the sparks in his hands grow red-hot and begin to dance with flecks of gold. They freeze into blue and silver when he says frost, and when he says shock, they turn a vivid purple and the taste of ozone begins to rise lightly in the air.

“Shock, which is what you managed to summon, has the highest magicka cost out of the three,” Arch-Mage Aren continues. “Most novices tend to use fire first which has the lowest magicka cost to cast. Magicka is the thing that Faralda told you to reach for, the arcane reserves of energy that we hold in our bodies.” 

He spreads out his fingers now and lets purple sparks of energy coat over his hand. A small, dark thundercloud begins to form in his outstretched palm, and Linnea watches as a miniature storm revolves in his hand. “The more concentrated a spell, the more magicka it costs,” he continues. He doesn’t look tired at all as the lightning intensifies in his hand. “We start our apprentices off with runes and simple missiles. Adepts move onto cloaking themselves in their chosen element and forming multiple missiles. Experts in the school can create veritable walls and heavier, more concentrated missiles, and masters?” Savos chuckles as he extinguishes the storm with a curl of his hand. “I am no master at Destruction — I prefer other schools of magic — but masters can create storms out of their pure will. _That_ is what you did outside our walls, according to Faralda.”

“If you hadn’t let go of your magicka when you did,” Faralda says, slow and somber. “You could’ve unleashed an entire storm. Didn’t you see how the sky darkened, how the thunder rumbled? Everyone in the College and the town had to have noticed it.” She gestures to the door and continues, “And if Ancano finds out, he’ll want to know why.”

“I don’t understand,” Linnea says softly. “I’ve never been a mage.” She lifts up her hands to examine them. They’re callused and worn as always. Her nails are cut short and still have some dirt under them from her last foray into the wilderness. The leather of her bracers are worn to buttery smoothness after years of hunting, not casting magic. She looks back up at Savos Aren and Faralda to say, “I’ve always been an archer, never a spellcaster.”

“It doesn’t make sense for a novice to be seconds away from casting a lightning storm though,” Faralda sighs. She starts to pace around Linnea in a circle which sets nervousness skittering down Linnea’s spine. 

“It’s not necessarily a terrible thing to be capable of magic,” the Arch-Mage tells Linnea, as quiet and gentle as he can make it. “I am quite content to see nearly any aspect of magic explored and investigated here. Magic is a true power, not something to be shunned by commoners or treated as an amusing diversion by politicians. It shapes worlds, creates and destroys life. It deserves proper respect and study. The College is a place where we can focus on that, without the pressures of the world weighing down on us.”

“Try saying that to Ancano,” Faralda scoffs. “He certainly counts as a pressure.”

Linnea rubs the back of her neck — a habit she hasn’t managed to break despite Delphine’s scoldings — and admits, “I once received a letter from the College when I was young, inviting me to study here. I never did because I was afraid.”

“An Altmer afraid of her own magic?” Savos hums. “A rare thing indeed.”

Linnea bristles a bit and replies, “I was raised a Nord, sir.”

Then, she realizes that Faralda stopped pacing. The sounds of her footsteps no longer thud against the soft rug covering the stone floor, and Linnea slowly turns around to see Faralda staring at her with round, wide eyes. She doesn’t say anything, but her gaze slowly drifts up and down Linnea’s body before she takes one step back.

“Faralda?” Linnea hears Savos ask behind her. 

“Oh Auri-El,” Faralda whispers. “We mustn’t let Ancano know.”

“Who is Ancano?” Linnea asks. She looks back to the Arch-Mage who now looks bitter. 

His lips purse into a thin line and he sighs, “Ancano is the College’s Thalmor advisor. The Third Aldmeri Dominion believed it was _necessary_ to have an advisor on their behalf. They wish to promote relations with us, but Ancano has proved to be a rather…”

“Sinister bastard?” Faralda finishes. She still keeps her wide berth around Linnea as she circles back to Savos and says, “There’s a good reason why I chose to live so far away from the Summerset Isles. But _you_ out of all people should know the Thalmor best, no?”

Her voice turns into acidic vitriol with the last sentence, and Linnea blinks hard. “No, I genuinely don’t understand,” she says. A small spark of irritation creeps into her voice though. “And I am _not_ part of the Thalmor. I may have been born Altmer, but I was raised as a daughter of Skyrim. I’ve lived in Solitude for all my life.”

The anger in Faralda’s face softens around the edges as she muses, “You do have a Nordic accent, and you dress and wear your hair in the Nordic style. I’ve never seen an Altmer like that. Not even a reconnaissance agent from the Thalmor would stoop that low.” She curls her hands into tight fists before she lets them fall slack at her sides. In a voice that aches with tiredness, she asks, “Tell me, Linnea Storm-bow, have you ever heard of the Children of the Dominion?”

Linnea looks towards Savos who merely strokes his goatee as he studies her. Then, she looks back over to Faralda and shakes her head. Faralda searches her expression — for a lie, Linnea supposes — and when she finds nothing, she continues, “Where did you get that tattoo on the back of your neck?”

“I don’t know,” Linnea replies, pouring as much honesty as she can into her words. “I’ve had it ever since I was young.” She hesitates before she says, “Someone told me to hide the tattoo from the Thalmor but that’s all I really know about it.”

Faralda inhales sharply at that and turns to look at Savos. “You know what that means,” she says, low and dangerous.

“Yes,” he finally says. “Yes, I do. I thought it was a mere rumor.”

“It was never a rumor; I _lived_ through it,” Faralda bites back. “The rest of the world, if they ever managed to hear of the secret, just thought it was nothing more than urban legend.” Her hands are shaking now by her sides, and now, she folds them behind her back.  “Once,” she begins. “Before the Great War, the Third Aldmeri Dominion thought it was an excellent idea to train children how to cast magic from an earlier age than they normally did in schools. They selected children with the finest pedigree and the most propensity for magic and called them the Children of the Dominion. They were to be the pride and joy of the Thalmor as well as their future.”

Linnea begins to feel a cold, hard knot of fear start to twist and curdle at the bottom of her heart, but she continues to listen. Faralda tries to muster up a smile, but it does not reach her eyes. “I was once one of their teachers,” she says. “I taught them how to cradle fire, how to breathe out ice, and how to call lightning. They were all so young, so bright, and so eager to learn.” The brittle smile drops from her lips. “I left when the Thalmor began to use the children as soldiers.”

“What?” Linnea breathes out, aghast. 

Faralda nods. “Yes, soldiers. They sent the children out as agents of the Third Aldmeri Dominion, whether that be assassinations, bounty hunting, or other horrific things.” Her eyes grow cold and hard. “They took those children and exposed them to the horrors of war. They took those children and molded them into _murderers.”_

“A-and you’re saying that I was one of them?” Linnea chokes out. “I… I don’t remember anything like that. I don’t remember anything before Skyrim.” She feels like she can barely breathe, and the tattoo on the back of her neck feels like it’s burning. The taste of ozone rises on the back of her tongue like bile.

Faralda gestures over to Linnea’s neck and says, “Each Child of the Dominion was branded with a symbol that represented their talent. Evidently, you were talented with destruction magic and lightning at that. An incredible feat for a child, in all honesty. Like Savos said, it requires the highest magicka out of the three elements.” She shakes her head. “That explains why you nearly brought down a storm on the College.”

“Would Ancano be aware of this?” Arch-Mage Aren finally asks. “How many of these children are left?”

Faralda shrugs and says, “I’m not exactly sure, but what I do know is that the project was discontinued after the Great War. One of the Head Justiciars — some veteran of the cleansing of Valenwood, I think? — spent her fortune and her time campaigning against it and publicizing it as much as she could within the Summerset Isles. She got it shut down in the end, and all traces of the project were erased. Otherwise, the Children of the Dominion were a tightly-kept secret, but the most high-ranking out of the Thalmor should be aware of it. They might even have some of the original children among their ranks as well. The most I’ve ever heard of is one stationed in Markarth.”

“Ondolemar?” 

Surprise creases Faralda’s brow as she says, “Yes. He was actually one of my students a very long time ago. He took to destruction magic quickly, but instead of your lightning, he preferred ice when I taught him. Did you meet him?”

Linnea nods, and Faralda’s expression falls. “That isn’t good,” she murmurs. “Did he suspect you?”

“He called me by a name I didn’t recognize,” Linnea quietly replies. Faralda’s eyes darken, but Linnea’s too busy nervously twisting her hands together. Now, she feels lightning trembling at her very core. Terror fills her at the sheer sensation of it. She remembers the disappointment and the anger in the Justiciar’s face from the last time she was in Markarth. _Enough with the degenerate accent and the clothes and the entire charade, Lindiriel!_ She thought he was a raving lunatic, but perhaps, _perhaps,_ he was right all along. It fills her with revulsion, and it sets fear rattling through her very bones. 

She looks over at a mirror in Savos Aren’s office, and her reflection still shows her in her hunter’s armor. She has a bow and quiver strapped to her back instead of a staff, but now, she remembers her reflection in the mirror just before the Thalmor party at the embassy. That dress felt like she was slipping on a second skin, and oh, how _terrible_ it felt to live in that too-comfortable skin. 

Faralda opens her mouth to reply, but then, she freezes. Savos quickly raises his hand, and now, the sigil on the door flickers into a deep red. 

Savos Aren and Faralda exchange a look before Faralda quietly says, “Ancano’s coming.”

Dread now climbs up Linnea’s throat and lodges there, heavy and choking.


	9. Chapter 9

Rikke looks down at the bottle of Black-Briar mead in her hand and steels her nerves before she reaches up to rap on the door. There’s a brief pause between her knock and the sound of distant footsteps on the other side of the door, but eventually Ingrid Thorn-Bow opens the door.  She  marvels at Ingrid's face and how time has barely marred her face. If anything, she has deeper smile lines and the crow’s feet by her eyes have gotten deeper with mirth rather than age. Her hair is still braided in the same manner, but instead of the armor that Rikke remembers her best in, she has an apron dusted with flour on. 

“Rikke,” Ingrid says slowly. Her eyes trace the lines of Rikke’s expression and drifts down to the bottle of mead and the Imperial armor that Rikke now wears, and she sighs, “One more ghost from the past back to haunt me, eh? If you meant to come as friends, why not come earlier? Come in, come in.”

Rikke follows her inside and looks around to see a house that is well-lived. There are small drawings tacked up on the wall — children’s drawings of who Rikke assumes to be Ingrid thanks to the crudely-drawn bow and arrows — and small vases of colorful mountain flowers. The scent of baking bread fills the room, and sunlight filters in through the windows, casting everything in golden light.

However, there are some things that undeniably remind Rikke of Ingrid’s reputation as a hunter. There are some furs hanging up and a set of magnificent antlers displayed on a shelf. Beneath them, there are a few more things that Rikke almost does a double-take at. There’s a skull that couldn’t be anything but a troll’s, and right by the fireplace, there’s a huge  _ dragon’s _ skull that holds the fire pokers. Rikke then glances over to some of the bows hanging up on nails on the other side of the wall. She only recognizes one — the one that Ingrid used most often during the Great War — but the others are different and infinitely more powerful. One is an ancient Nord bow with frost still clinging to the wood despite the warmth in the house, and another one is as black as ebony. 

She then hazards a look at Ingrid who’s puttering about with some tea. The woman looks positively  _ domestic _ . Not that’s necessarily a bad thing, but the last few times that Rikke remembers seeing Ingrid is mostly her covered in blood, hauling back the pelts and meat that she caught from her last hunting trip. That, and also, her memories from the war. 

Even though Ingrid was an archer and was mostly on the back lines rather than Rikke’s own position in the thick of things with people like Galmar or Ulfric, Ingrid did more than her fair share. She didn’t get her reputation for nothing, and it’s just startling to see the woman who launched a thousand arrows pull up a chair with an apron and a cup of tea. 

“I feel like this is what I’m supposed to do for visitors,” Ingrid says with a small laugh. “Not that I get many visitors nowadays, but here’s the standard cup of tea.”

“I brought mead,” Rikke says awkwardly. “For you.”

“Drinking in the middle of the day?” Ingrid returns. She cheekily grins as she takes the bottle. “I’ll uncork some for you, but I’m not sure how I feel about the Legion’s second-in-command chugging down mead with the sun barely at high noon.” She sets the bottle down and folds her hands together in her lap, and her expression sobers. “So, what brings you here to my humble home? I haven’t seen you in ages, Rikke. Or should I say, Legate Rikke?”

“Just Rikke is fine,” Rikke says absently. “I just stopped by to say hello.”

Ingrid’s gaze grows sharp, and she replies, “We both know that’s false, Rikke, so let’s not demean ourselves by dancing around the subject. For Talos’ sake, if you wanted to say hello, you could’ve come by anytime since you were first stationed in Solitude. We’re not Imperials or Bretons or heaven forbid, the Thalmor, so take a seat and let’s get to the point.”

“Careful with the names of the gods you speak,” Rikke warns. She glances back at the window and the door, both of which are firmly shut.

Ingrid shrugs and says, “You haven’t gone and joined the Thalmor, have you?”

“No,” Rikke sputters. “I would rather die than have Skyrim fall to the Dominion. What was the point of fighting the whole war then?”

Ingrid merely takes a sip of her own tea and returns, “Good. Not that I ever expected you to. Back to business then. You must be here to ask me some questions for your general, yes?” Her expression remains calm and collected, but her eyes follow Rikke’s every movement.

Rikke almost shakes her head in sheer bafflement. Ingrid hasn’t changed a whit. Blunt and unapologetically bold. Truly one of the bravest shield-sisters she’s ever met. Rikke takes a seat in an empty chair and replies, “Yes. I am. How did you know?”

Ingrid cocks her head and says, “Someone from the Stormcloaks came to my doorstep, just like you did. Ironically, with another bottle of Black-Briar mead too. Not the one that your people originally captured though.” 

“And what did they ask you for?” Rikke asks, leaning forward in her seat now.

Ingrid scoffs, “What else? To join their cause. I suspect you’re going to ask me the same thing, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Rikke admits. 

Ingrid sets down her cup, and it rattles against the small tray that she brought the cups on. “And why should I?” she challenges.

Rikke grits her teeth and says, “Because we are keeping Skyrim safe from those who would rather see her fall.”

Ingrid folds her hands on her lap and points out, “We fought by Ulfric’s side.”

“Once,” Rikke barely manages to get out. Ingrid’s right. Rikke remembers all of them when they were once brothers and sisters from the same nation, same Empire, against the same threat. She was there by Ulfric’s side, there to raise her shield and block a strike aimed for his neck. She was there by Galmar’s side when they were still new and green to war and horrified by what they saw. She was there by Skjor’s side when they both screamed out war cries so loud that they pierced through the ears of the Thalmor. She was there by Ingrid’s side when she was shot down and stabbed with poison. And they were all there when Ulfric was taken by the Thalmor, helpless and bloodied and too exhausted to do anything more. Perhaps that was when it all began to crumble down.

She curls her hands into fists and says, “We need the Empire. Without it, Skyrim would fall to the Dominion, almost immediately.” Her expression caves in on itself, and she lets months and months of her self-restraint crumble in the face of her old friend. “Shield-brothers and shield-sisters killing each other? Families torn apart? Ulfric might like to delude himself, but for me, this is not the Skyrim that I want to live in. You’ve fought in the Great War, you know what would happen if the Dominion took Skyrim without the support of the Empire.”

She’s spent far too long, trying to show Tullius what it means to be fighting a Nord, what he is  _ facing _ when Ulfric invokes such things and causes as  _ their Skyrim. _ Tullius, as accomplished as he may be as a general, will never come close to understanding what she and Ingrid could. The power of nationalism, sweeping an entire nation and making people fall to their knees, was far more powerful than Tullius could ever consider it to be, and it is the danger that Rikke constantly keeps her eyes on nowadays. 

But she’s fought in the Great War. She’s seen elves summon raging fires and sparking storms that could consume a city. She’s seen her brothers and sisters at arms fall, one by one, in bloody piles. She’s even seen a bolt of elven lightning strike the White-Gold Tower itself. She is tired of war, especially the war that the Thalmor would bring, and she does not want that war at their doorstep. It’s a bloody, shameful pity that Ulfric cannot see this bare-boned truth. She is no acolyte or blind follower of the Thalmor just by siding with the Empire, but to Rikke, it seems like Ulfric cannot see sense anymore after his torture at the hands of the Thalmor. 

“We would all die if the Thalmor took Skyrim,” Ingrid says. The levity and calmness is gone from the lines of her face, and instead, she looks solemn and grim. “But do you know what the Stormcloak told me? To them, it’s more than just the name of a god. For them, it’s about taking back a land that is theirs. It’s about breaking free from the hold of a group of tyrants that have had their hands wrapped around Tamriel for far too long. Do you still believe in the power of your Empire to keep us together?”

“Better to stand together than to fall divided,” Rikke whispers. “And the Thalmor are dividing us.”

Ingrid breathes in, soft and shallow, and after she exhales, she reaches for the bottle of mead and pours it into her own teacup. She then downs the mead in a single gulp and says, “What the Stormcloaks came here for. It wasn’t just that.” Rikke watches Ingrid with wide eyes as she continues, “They asked about my daughter.”

“Your daughter?” Rikke echoes.

She heard about Ingrid’s daughter. There are few in Solitude who don’t know how one of the most decorated veterans of the Great War adopted an  _ elven _ girl. 

“Yes, my daughter,” Ingrid sighs. She wipes her lips with the back of her hand and veritably slams the bottle on the table. The cups shake with the impact as Ingrid bitterly laughs, “They want her to join the Stormcloaks.”

“They didn’t come to ask you?” Rikke asks.

Ingrid shakes her head. “No, they tried to feed me the same spiel about joining the Stormcloaks. But me joining them means that another one of their bloody Nord heroes was joining their cause alongside Galmar and Ulfric, those milk-drinking fools,” she says. Her eyes narrow, and a flash of fury flickers in her eyes. “And it will take far more convincing for me to join a cause that used to declare my own daughter as a traitor. You’re right, Rikke. I’m tired of seeing the daughters and sons of Skyrim killing each other and spilling needless blood over this silly squabble, but I won’t join the civil war. Not unless my own daughter is in danger. If you want me to join your Empire, then I’ll give you the same answer.”

She leans back in her seat and exhales out another heavy sigh. This time, the sigh is so long that it dusts off some of the flour near the top of her apron and makes it puff up in a miniscule white cloud. “I am tired of war,” she declares. “You’d think that they’d all be sick of the bloody thing by now.”

“Most of the Stormcloaks are whelps too young to remember,” Rikke agrees. “None of them know what real war is like.” The two women exchange looks, and Rikke knows that they both remember the same things. The heavy iron tang of blood on the air, smoke choking their lungs, fear coating each and every nerve with hot, slippery adrenaline. 

Rikke gets up now, and before she leaves, she says, “Thank you for telling me.”

Ingrid gets up to open the door for Rikke, and on her way out, she laughs a small, mirthless laugh and replies, “Now, go off and tell your general. And come by more often. It’s good to see old friends.” She taps Rikke on the shoulder and says, “Just don’t bring your politics to dinner.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, shield-sister,” Rikke returns with a small smile. She steps back out into the streets of Solitude, and the door to Ingrid’s house shuts behind her. The sun is still up, and the city is still bustling, but Rikke takes the brief moment to shut her eyes and inhale a single, deep breath. Just for this moment, there’s still a fragile peace left in the air. 

Then, Rikke opens her eyes and heads back to work.

 

* * *

 

“Ancano,” Savos murmurs as he runs his fingers over the reddened sigil. “He must have noticed something strange.”

“No, I think he just likes to rap on your door with more of his nonsense,” Faralda mutters. She glances at Linnea and purses her lips. “What are we going to do with you? There’s no good reason for you to be in the Arch-mage’s office. I’m sure I could come up with something myself though, but you?”

“Uh,” Linnea says blankly. She can’t get any other word out, and the tightness in her chest starts to grow with sheer dread. She rummages through her bag and finds nothing. However, she does find a few potions that she made during her last time at Whiterun. Several poisons concocted from canis root, deathbell, and imp stool, and another failed attempt at making a potion that she kept for sentimental value. She remembers making it with Aela while being drunk and accidentally tipping almost an entire container’s worth of ice wraith teeth into it. She picks out the vial and holds it up to the light. The liquid inside shimmers briefly before it runs completely clear. 

“Is that an Invisibility potion?” Faralda asks. She snatched the vial from Linnea’s hand and inspects it. “Oh, you very well may have just saved us all,” she breathes out. 

_ More like Aela’s work, _ Linnea wants to say. Linnea reaches for the vial again and cradles it in her hands. Even though fear makes her tremble right now, the thought of Aela with her lovely smile makes Linnea feel soft and warm. It eases the knot of dread in her throat and chest by a fraction. 

Linnea uncorks the vial and downs it just as the sound of echoing footsteps grows louder. It tastes like the bitter winter wind, too-sharp peppermint, and new snow. The outline of her limbs shivers before it fades away to blend in perfectly with her surroundings. Linnea feels cold, almost like she’s just been thrust into a frozen lake, but when she looks down, she sees nothing. 

Just before a knock resounds against the door, Arch-mage Aren waves a hand in the general vicinity. Linnea feels soft magic settle around her shoulders and filter down to her feet where they wrap around her shoes. Then, he goes over to the door, dismisses the sigil, and ever so slowly opens it. 

Another Altmer strides into the office with nary a greeting and says instead, “Ah, Faralda, abandoned your post, I see?”

“I had business with the Arch-mage,” Faralda evenly replies. 

Linnea has to step out of the way as Ancano bustles in, and as she takes a step to the side, the magic around her muffles her footsteps. “Of course you do,” Ancano says with a withering smile. He folds his hands behind his back and says, “I suppose you haven’t noticed the storm outside our windows.”

Oh no. Linnea’s stomach lurches, and it takes all of her self-control to tamp it down. She sneaks over to Savos Aren’s desk and ducks behind it. Thank her lucky stars that some of the Thieves’ Guild taught her some tips on how to sneak around better. She never thought that she would need it as badly as she does now. 

Savos Aren clears his throat and nods over to Faralda as he says, “Actually, that is why Faralda came up here.”

“To report a storm that we could all see from the windows?” Ancano asks. “I don’t see why a gatekeeper has to announce that fact. Unless, you know the reason why?” Linnea can’t see his face from her angle now, but she can just picture the smirk on his face. She wonders if being terribly rude is a prerequisite to becoming a Thalmor.

Faralda stiffens, but she keeps her brittle smile firmly on as she replies, “I do, in fact. I was just about to report to the Arch-mage that a dragon sighted overhead was likely responsible for the storm but with breath of lightning instead of fire. It would be good to reinforce the College’s defenses and wards lest we all fall into the sea.”

Linnea’s breath catches in her throat, and she wonders if Faralda  _ knows _ about her.

“A dragon?” Ancano snorts. “Preposterous.”

Savos folds his arms across his chest and says, “There  _ have _ been more attacks by dragons in recent times. Have you not heard of the incident at Helgen?”

“I have,” Ancano says curtly. “But to have a dragon summon down an entire lightning storm seems improbable.”

“But a dragon can bring down ice and fire and other powers beyond that with its voice alone,” Faralda says. She rolls her eyes, but thankfully, Ancano doesn’t see it in time. “Is it really so improbable to have a dragon breathe lightning? Regardless, I came to inform the Arch-mage so that we can suitably prepare in the case of a dragon attack on Winterhold.”

Ancano opens his mouth to reply something back, but Savos Aren interrupts him by asking, “Now them, did you need something, Ancano?” His tone is mild, but from her hiding place, Linnea can see that the smile on his face never reaches his eyes. 

Ancano tilts his head to the side and says, “I came to discuss the storm since it seemed like the source of it came from the College, from some  _ caster, _ but if it is to be a dragon, then I suppose I am incorrect.”

“I suppose so,” Savos evenly replies. “Later tonight, I will consult with Mirabelle and the other teachers in the school about the imminent threat.” Before Ancano can say anything else, Savos says, “And I assure you, you’re also welcome to the meeting. I would hate to exclude an advisor such as yourself from a meeting.”

Ancano draws himself up to his full height and looks down at Savos Aren as he sniffs, “I should certainly hope so. Very well then. I shall take my leave.” He sweeps out of the office just as he came in — with a dramatic flourish — and the door slams shut behind him.

Faralda leans against the desk heavily and exhales out a long sigh. Savos Aren folds his arms and muses, “A dragon. Quite clever of you, Faralda.”

“Being clever is how you survive in the Dominion,” Faralda wearily says. She looks over to where Linnea used to be and says, “You can come out now.”

Linnea slowly rises up from her position behind the desk. She watches as the Arch-mage begins to draw the sigil up again, and she begins to shake off the invisibility. It feels like warmth returning to her body: slowly, then all at once. Faralda jumps a little bit when Linnea clears her throat, and she jerks her head over to where Linnea is standing. “You managed to sneak over there,” she says. An approving glint shines in her eyes, and she says, “Alright, back to our original conversation.”

Linnea’s expression sobers. “The Children of the Dominion,” she says ever so slowly. The words feel foreign on her tongue. 

“Yes, the Children,” Faralda sighs. She says something in a foreign tongue, and  _ oh, _ something about the words feels so achingly familiar to Linnea. “That’s what they’re called in Altmeris,” Faralda explains when Linnea doesn’t respond. “You truly don’t remember anything, do you?” she murmurs. 

Linnea helplessly shakes her head. Savos rubs his chin before he asks, “You don’t think Colette could do anything about that, could she?” 

“Well, I sent her to watch my position,” Faralda says. “I could send Drevis to replace her and have him send her up here.”

“Yes, that would be nice,” Savos says absently. He runs a glowing finger down the sigil on the door and adds, “Hopefully, Ancano does not bother us again.”

“Oh, you know he will,” Faralda mutters. “He just loves to stick his damn nose into everything. Very well, I’ll send a message to Drevis.” She raises her hands, and they begin to glow with a whirling, white light. She brings her hands up to her lips and mouths out a few words before she sends the light off on its way. 

Linnea blinks a little at the sight of it, and Faralda says, “Just a little messaging system that only works within the College. It’s helpful when you need to find a wayward student lost in the College or to call a scholar over for a meeting.” She nods over to an empty chair and says, “Have a seat. We’ll get Colette to take a look at your memories. If anyone would know how to do anything, it would be her. She’s our best at Restoration magic despite how nervous she can get.”

Linnea takes a seat, but as she does, her fingers begin to tremble. She wishes Aela was here or perhaps her mother. She swallows hard, trying to get  _ something _ past the knot in her throat, but she can’t. So, Linnea stares out of the window at the billowing white clouds in the bitter-cold sky and longs to hold her lover’s hand to get her through this at the very least.

 

* * *

 

Brynjolf strides through the streets of Solitude, blending half with the shadows and half with the crowd of travelers making their way to the tavern. Mercer might have sent the newcomer out to Honningbrew Meadery, but Sapphire passed Brynjolf some information that she gathered from an insider working at Honningbrew Meadery. At this point, Brynjolf isn’t quite sure that Altmer lass made it to Honningbrew and did what Mercer and Maven Black-Briar wanted her to do, but the information that Sapphire got was… Suspicious at best.

Sapphire told him that there was a constant flow of traffic between Honningbrew and Solitude, and as far as Brynjolf knows, the only person in Solitude that has a tie back to the Guild and is capable of orchestrating the problems that the Guild has been encountering is a specific contact at the East Empire Trading Company. Brynjolf knows that it’s damn risky to be caught out here, especially if he hasn’t approved it with Mercer Frey ahead of time, but what is a thief if not a touch cocky? 

Brynjolf still doesn’t know why he decided not to tell Mercer. He just told the man that he was going out on a job, and Mercer barely acknowledged him with a nod. Brynjolf just gets a bad feeling, and nowadays, Brynjolf’s decided to trust his gut feeling more. After all, that’s what got him to invite Linnea to the Guild, and that’s done them a world of good. 

Alright, Brynjolf admits that might be a bit of a hyperbole, but at this point, he’ll take whatever scrap of luck he can get.

He heads over to the nearest tavern, following the sound of raucous laughter and a thread of a bard’s song, but as he rounds the corner, he almost collides into two women. He reaches out to steady her arm, and she laughs, “Why, young man, you’re certainly in a rush to get somewhere.” 

“Apologies,” Brynjolf says. She looks like a middle-aged woman with crow’s feet around her feet that crease with her smile.

“Watch where you’re going next time,” the other woman says. She’s younger — maybe the other woman’s daughter? — and her voice has a sharper bite to it.

The first woman lays a hand on her shoulder and softly says, “Oh, Aela, it’s fine. Some people are just always in a rush, my own daughter included. Do you know the amount of times Linnea’s broken something or ran into someone just because she was in a rush?”

“Oh, I can believe,” Aela says. Fondness makes the corners of her lips quirk up. 

Brynjolf squints at the woman and wonders if this is the same lass that they’re talking about. It can’t be; Linnea’s not an uncommon name in Skyrim. “Linnea,” he says slowly. “Linnea Storm-bow? That elven lass that manages to stumble her way into any old place with nary a thought for it?”

“Oh? You know my little troublemaker?” the first woman says. She smiles broadly and continues, “Why, I see that I’m meeting all sorts of people in Solitude nowadays. I’m Ingrid, Linnea’s mother.”

“I don’t think Linnea’s ever mentioned you,” Aela says with suspicion glinting in her eyes. Brynjolf gulps a bit. He swears her teeth are  _ pointed. _

He can’t help but wonder if this is the infamous girlfriend that Linnea always talks about. “But I’ve heard a lot about you,” he chooses to say. “You’re the one that’s, uh…” He sifts through his memory and realizes that there’s a lot of things that Linnea’s said about her. Not all of them are necessarily things that he’d like to say in front of her own mother, so he finally decides to say, “Uh, you’re the great archer and the one who….threw a bear into the side of a cave.”

Aela pauses, and she rakes a searching look over Brynjolf before she relents and offers a small smile. “Aye, that was me,” she says. “I was out on a hunt with Linnea once, and we managed to track the bear down to its cave. I...may have taken some liberties while fighting it.” 

“Why, is this the same story that Linnea wrote to me about being chased by a troll and ice wraiths before then getting into a fight with a cave bear?” Ingrid asks.

Aela rubs the back of her neck as she admits, “There are many creatures roaming the wilds of Skyrim. Perhaps we underestimated the number of them that would be active when we set out at dusk.”

Brynjolf gapes at them a little bit, but then, he reminds himself that Linnea challenged a fucking dwarven  _ centurion _ just to pay off someone’s debt. A story about getting chased by a troll and ice wraiths pales in comparison to the centurion story. 

“And what is your name, kind stranger?” Ingrid asks. “You seem to be a good friend of my daughter’s if you’ve heard about Aela.”

Brynjolf rifles through a few fake names that he’s used in the past, but the way Ingrid smiles at him so earnestly makes him say, “Brynjolf. The name’s Brynjolf, ma’am.”

“Oh, no need for such respect, just call me Ingrid,” Ingrid chuckles. She gestures over to the direction of the tavern and says, “Care to join us? Any friend of my daughter’s is a friend of mine.”

Brynjolf looks at the tavern and debates on his options. On one hand, he’d like to track down the tip about the East Empire Trading Company. He could probably sneak into their warehouses and see if he can find some sort of document or note, or better yet, if he could find Gulum-Ei himself. At least, based on his suspicions, that’s the best guess he has as to who the mole is. But also, the chance of Gulum-Ei in a tavern was quite high. The idiot had no honor and loved to get drunk. So, Brynjolf puts on a wide grin and replies, “That would be lovely, ma’am— I mean, Ingrid.”

The tavern itself is called the Winking Skeever, and Brynjolf rather likes the look of the sign. There’s even a skeever drawn in white paint on the sign. He’s partial to the Ragged Flagon himself, but this works too. Aela grabs them a table, and Ingrid flags down someone to bring them three mugs of ale. She seems comfortable there and knows almost everyone, calling them out by name and asking them how they are. Aela, however, doesn’t seem as familiar. Her eyes always dart from person to person, and Brynjolf gets the sense that he probably shouldn’t try anything funny around her. 

“So, how  _ do _ you know Linnea?” Aela finally asks. She props her elbows up on the table and regards him with a keen look. The suspicion isn’t completely gone from her expression, and Brynjolf wonders how he should choose his words. He’s not quite sure how much about the Thieves’ Guild Linnea’s spoken about. If he recalls correctly, Aela is one of the Companions of Jorrvaskr, and he doesn’t think a Companion would take kindly to a thief. 

“She stopped by Riften and roamed around the market square, trying to help different people,” he finally says. That’s the most truth that he can give her. “Hard not to miss an Altmer lass like her so determined to help around.”

“Did she help you?” Aela asks. “I know she goes to Riften more often than not, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard her mention you. Any other friends?” 

Ingrid sits back down at the table and now listens into the conversation with a brow raised. “Yes, I don’t think she’s mentioned anything specific about Riften,” she muses. “I’d love to know more. My daughter won’t tell me much about her adventures, seems to think that it’ll worry me or something like that, but I’d love to hear stories.”

Oh, names are difficult. He doesn’t want to give the wrong name and put someone else in the guild into danger. Brynjolf rubs the pad of his thumb over his palm under the table — a nervous habit that’s still taken him years to try and break — and says, “Well, I met her in the market square after she helped a merchant with his items. She gets along well with me and Niruin. They like practicing archery together. I think right now, their record is relatively even? One of them has a few more points above the other, and I can’t quite recall who’s winning.”

Aela brightens and says, “Oh, I’ve heard her talk about Niruin before. That’s the archer from Valenwood, yes?”

Brynjolf hopes that Linnea hasn’t spoken  _ too much _ about the Thieves’ Guild, but he replies, “Yep, Niruin’s also the one that bound up her arm after she got that nasty wound.” That makes Aela’s and Ingrid’s expression both sour, and he grimaces. A wrong detail to mention, evidently. It confuses him though. Have they not seen Linnea since then? The scar wouldn’t heal that fast, even if she constantly drank health potions, and Linnea doesn’t seem like the type to either practice healing magic or to find someone else to erase her scars for her. 

“What wound?” Ingrid asks. Her tone is light, but there’s a thread of worry twisting through it. 

Brynjolf hesitates, and although he’s got a silver tongue, the way Linnea’s mother looks right now makes him stumble. Curse his heart. He always made fun of the lass for having a bleeding heart, but right now, Brynjolf finds that he might have one as well. He exhales out and says, “I know the lass likes to get into all sorts of trouble across Skyrim, but she came back to Riften with a particularly nasty one.” He runs a finger down his own forearm and shrugs. “She’s fine now. We sent her off with more healing potions and told her not to do anything stupid. I don’t know if she decided to listen, but that’s what she did.”

Linnea’s mother doesn’t look satisfied with the answer at all, but Aela lets out a small whuffing sound. Brynjolf glances over just in time to see her shake her head with frustration, and Aela catches his gaze with a flinty-eyed look in return. “I keep telling her to be careful,” she mutters. “Damn, I hope she’s well on her way to Winterhold by now.”

“Winterhold?” Brynjolf repeats. “She’s going to Winterhold?” He thought she was on her way to Honningbrew Meadery after taking some sort of detour in Markarth. 

“Aye, I told her to get herself to the College and learn some healing magic if she was constantly planning on getting hurt,” Aela says. “Went straight to Winterhold after Markarth.” She eyes Brynjolf carefully now. “Did she come to Riften before or after Markarth?”

“No, no, her accident was before Markarth, I think,” Brynjolf answers. “Although, I thought she would’ve come back to Riften instead of heading immediately to Winterhold.”

“She seems to have much business in Riften then,” Ingrid now says. She takes a swig of ale and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand roughly. “First, she starts hunting dragons. Next, she moves out to Whiterun. Now, she’s running jobs from Riften to Markarth. What will my daughter possibly do next?”

“A hunter’s path takes her close to her prey,” Aela offers.

Ingrid arches a brow and says, “Never did a hunter track her prey across the entirety of Skyrim though.”

Brynjolf’s about to say something in return, but then, he sees the glimpse of scales by the bar. They’re the color of dark oil, and under the flickering lantern lights, they gleam brightly with a sickening sheen. Brynjolf’s eyes narrow at the sight of the familiar Argonian, and he turns to Ingrid and Aela as he says, “Apologies for cutting the conversation short, but I think I see an old friend of mine. I’ll be right back.” 

He stands up, and on silent steps, he makes his way over to Gulum-Ei who’s indulging in far too much alcohol for a night like this. Brynjolf blends into the tavern-goers seamlessly and manages to get right by Gulum-Ei’s side. A wide, malicious grin finally cracks through Brynjolf’s face, and he claps Gulum-Ei on the back as he murmurs, “Good to see you, Gulum-Ei. Never done an honest day's work in your life for all that coin you're carrying, eh lad?”


End file.
